Baal (comp. Judg. ii, 13; 1 Sam. vii, 4; xii, 10), but the form Ashtoreth appears in 1 Kings xi, 5, 33, as the name of "the goddess of the Sidonians." The name is found in other forms, as Astarte, Ashtart, and is doubtless to be in some way associated or identified with the Assyrian goddess Ishtar, the queen of the gods and "the queen of heaven" referred to in Jer. vii, 18; xliv, 17. By the Phoenicians and the Greeks this same goddess seems to have been identified with Aphrodite, and was probably connected with the rites of Tammuz referred to in Ezek. viii, 14. The cult of this goddess Ashtoreth was of a pernicious tendency, encouraged unchastity, and is called in 2 Kings xxiii, 13, "the abomination of the Sidonians." Chemosh was the name of the national deity of the Moabites, and in Num. xxi, 29, and Jer. xlviii, 46, the Moabites are called "the people of Chemosh," as if they were sons and daughters of the god. We learn from 2 Kings iii, 26, 27, that this deity was worshiped by human sacrifices. Hence, in 2 Kings xxiii, 13, Chemosh is called "the abomination of Moab." In the same verse mention is made of "Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon." Ammonites and Moabites occupied contiguous territory, and their religious cults were probably quite similar. The names Molech, Moloch, and Milcom are but different forms of the same word which means a king, and designates the deity as the great ruler of the land and people where he is worshiped. Human sacrifices were common among the Ammonites as well as among the Moabites. The argument of Jephthah, in Judg. xi, 24, implies that Chemosh was also recognized as the god of the Ammonites. Dagon is mentioned in Judg. xvi, 23, and 1 Sam. v, 2-7, as the name of the god of the Philistines. The Hebrew etymology would suggest that the images of this deity had, at least in part, the form of a fish, but this is questioned and denied by recent lexical authorities. Passing beyond the borders of Canaan we meet the name of Rimmon, a Syrian deity, in whose temple Naaman and his king were wont to worship (2 Kings v, 18). The name is probably the same as that of Ramman, the Assyrian god of the wind, the thunderstorm, and the lightning. It is noteworthy that when Naaman, "knowing that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel," asked pardon for bowing with his royal master when he thereafter accompanied him into the house of Rimmon, the prophet Elisha bade him "go in peace," and did not forbid him to carry home with him "two mules' burden of earth" that he might, even in Syria, worship on the holy soil of Israel's God. In 2 Kings xvii, 30, mention is made of Succoth-benoth (probably identical with Sakkuth in the Hebrew text of Amos v, 26), Nergal, Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech, and Anam

melech, names of so many gods of the nations whom the king of Assyria transported from the eastern provinces of his empire and settled in the cities of Samaria. Some of these names are probably corrupt, and little or nothing is known now of the cults which they represented. The same is to be said of the Assyrian god Nisroch, in whose temple Sennacherib was worshiping when slain (2 Kings xix, 37). In Isa. xlvi, 1, Jer. 1, 2; li, 44, we meet the names of the Babylonian deities Bel, Nebo, and Merodach. Bel is probably the same as Baal, meaning lord, and when connected with the name Merodach may be regarded as an appellative, Lord Merodach. The Babylonian inscriptions speak of him as "the great Lord," "the King of the heavens and the earth." The form of the name found on the monuments is Marduk. Nebo, or Nabu, had a temple near Babylon, and was worshiped as the god of wisdom and learning.

It is not important here to enlarge upon these names. From extra-biblical sources we may learn the names and attributes of many other deities which were worshiped by the nations with whom Israel had more or less intercourse. The vast pantheon of Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cults has been brought to our knowledge by learned specialists, who have given their lives to the study of the monuments of the life and thought of these ancient nations. No evidence is found to show that any of the tribes and peoples of antiquity were without gods and religious practices. In every case the names of the deities worshiped commanded the reverence of the worshiper, and it is worthy of our attention that, in spite of the prohibition of Exod. xxiii, 13-"Make no mention of the name of other gods"-so many of the names of foreign gods are recorded in the sacred books of Israel. These records show in how many ways the chosen people were brought in realistic touch with the religious life of other nations; and the names of the deities mentioned, and also corresponding names of all the gods of other peoples not known to the Israelites, point in every case to a religious cult through which innumerable human hearts were feeling after the mystery of the Invisible.

CHAPTER III

ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF GOD

1. Involved in the Origin of Religion. Inquiry after the origin of the idea of God is virtually the same as asking after the origin of religion. In our study of the natural constitution of man we have noticed the religious element which appears in all races and generations of men, and we observed that it always and everywhere involved a sense of necessary dependence on some unseen higher Power. The notion of that higher Power may be very vague and imperfect, but in civilized man and in the savage alike it persistently asserts itself. It includes in many cases a belief in the existence of spiritual beings who have power over man's life and destiny, and whose favor is to be sought by some form of service or of sacrifice. It appears that wherever human life has existed upon the earth religion has been manifest as an essential element of that life. It is, accordingly, as proper and as pertinent to inquire after the origin of human life on earth as after the origin of religion and the concept of God.

2. Inadequate Theories. Accordingly, one's views of the origin of religion and of the concept of God are likely to be governed largely, if not wholly, by his views of the origin of man. Religion itself inheres in man's spiritual nature and includes his consciousness of relationship to the unseen Power on whom he is dependent; it would therefore seem that the origin of religion and its concept of God must have been the first human recognition of such mystic and divine relationship. But who shall presume to say when, where, and how that consciousness and concept of the superhuman Mystery first dawned on the soul of man? The various theories of the origin and earliest forms of religion fail to account for all the facts which enter into the concept of God. We possess an immense literature on the ideas and culture of prehistoric man, and on the facts of animism, fetishism, totemism, ancestor worship, and the mythologies and folk-lore of peoples ancient and modern, but the vast collection of these facts contains no certain testimony touching primitive man's conception of a supernatural Power. All religion is essentially animistic. It is the feeling of a finite soul after the great Oversoul. Whether we suppose the earliest form of religion were fetishism, or animism, or ances

tor worship, we have at most only the facts and forms of an existing cult, not any certain knowledge of the origin of that cult. The hypothesis that primitive man elaborated his concept of Deity by a process of observation and inference as he pondered things visible and invisible, the phenomena of sleep, and dreams, and swoons, and ecstasy, and death, and thence came to believe in ghosts and to worship them out of a sense of fear that they might injure him if not propitiated-all this is but a fine-spun series of suppositions utterly incapable of demonstration. It is not difficult to ascertain with much accuracy what were and are the thoughts and practices of sundry very primitive tribes of men; but when we inquire what were the first ideas of God and what the first forms of religious worship among the first one hundred or one thousand human beings that appeared on earth, we obtain no satisfactory answer in any naturalistic theory that has been proposed.

3. A Question of Psychology Rather than of History. We shall not obtain much light upon this question by turning our whole attention to the supposed conditions of primitive man. He is too far away from us, and his thoughts and practices too indistinct for us to trace with scientific certainty. We shall do far better to study man as he now is. All evidence goes to show that religion is as old and primitive as human life, and as universal as the human race. The original concept of God in man is therefore a question of psychology rather than of history. It matters little for this question whether one or another known form of religion first appeared in human life, for back of any and of all forms of religious expression must have been some sense or concept of the invisible Mystery. Why should there be any such concept in man more than in the fish of the sea or the fowl of the air? We can find our only worthy answer in the facts of human personality. We can conceive no satisfactory definition of religion that does not recognize in man a feeling of relationship to the invisible Power whom we call God, and such feeling is inseparable from certain conceptions of the Deity and certain voluntary acts which the feeling and the concept inspire.

4. The Concept a Revelation. Is it or is it not a fact that our first concept of a higher Power is of the nature of a revelation coming directly from that Power? We may call it a discovery, a perception, or an intuition, but it is inseparable from the influence upon us of the mystic Reality. The dawn breaks in upon us and we recognize the light that expels the darkness; the infantile. mind may, for its convenience, construct out of the phenomena the myths of Ushas, Eos, and Aurora, but we know that our

thoughts and mythic tales did not originate the dawn. The light first revealed itself to man and was never a creation of his thoughts, but his explanations of it have been many and various. So, too, the infant soon recognizes the mother's tender touch and care, but who can describe the dawning consciousness of a child's perception of parental nursing, or tell what dreams and fancies inchoate first flashed upon the infant soul? In like manner may we affirm that the first concept of God, whenever or wherever apprehended, is never a product of human reason but always a revelation coming from above. The initial stages of the experience may be a feeling after God, just as the infant clings instinctively to its mother's breast; but it is also true that no such feeling after God occurs without God's previous feeling after the human soul, and making manifest his presence and superior power. We accordingly maintain that among all the tribes and nations of men, from the beginning until now, God has made himself known. He is the Light which has imparted and ever imparts spiritual light and life to everyone who comes into this world. Men have misconceived and misinterpreted this heavenly Light, but it keeps continuously shining, and it is impossible that man, who exists in the image of God, should fail to reflect that image in the dawning and growing consciousness of his own personal emotions, ideas, and acts of volition.'

5. Revelation Gradual and in Parts. But some man will ask why it is that God should reveal himself so feebly and so variously among the nations. Our inability to answer the question does not alter the fact that all knowledge of God and all progress in every department of human knowledge has come gradually, in many different portions and in divers ways. Shall we not also ask why the omniscient Creator of heaven and earth and man produces anything by way of birth and growth? Why especially should man be born a helpless infant and require the slow and patient nourishment and the long and tedious discipline of years? Why should he not come to maturity in an hour and be gifted from the

The following passage from Professor C. B. Upton's Lectures on the Bases of Religious Belief may be appropriately cited here: "If it be true, as we have seen reason to conclude it is, that the individual man, though in respect to God a finite and dependent being, has yet, immanent in his consciousness, the presence and activity of the universal ground of his own being, and that it is the presence of this universal principle within him which alone enables him to have dynamic and cognitive relations with the other finite existences in the cosmos, it follows from this very fact that man, as a thinking, a moral and a spiritual being, is conscious of wholly transcending his own finitude, and can discriminate between the action of this universal or higher self, as we term it, and that of his own finite self, that there is a certain self-revelation of the Eternal and Infinite One to the finite soul, and therefore an indestructible basis for religious ideas and religious beliefs as distinguished from what is called scientific knowledge."-The Hibbert Lectures for 1893, p. 16. London, 1894.