of the human race. The same words do not mean the same thing in Anglo-Saxon and English, in Latin and French: much less can we expect that the words of any modern language should be the exact equivalents of an ancient Semitic language, such as the Hebrew of the Old Testament.

Ancient words and ancient thoughts, for both go together, have in the Old Testament not yet arrived at that stage of abstraction in which, for instance, active powers, whether natural or supernatural, can be represented in any but a personal and more or less human form. When we speak of a temptation from within or from without, it was more natural for the ancients to speak of a tempter, whether in a human or in an animal form; when we speak of the ever-present help of God, they call the Lord their rock, and their fortress, their buckler, and their high tower. They even speak of the Rock that begat them' (Deut. xxxii. 18.), though in a very different sense from that in which Homer speaks of the rock from whence man has sprung. What with us is a heavenly message, or a godsend, was to them a winged messenger; what we

call divine guidance, they speak of as a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way, and a pillar of light to give them light; a refuge from the storm, and a shadow from the heat. What is really meant is no doubt the same, and the fault is ours, not theirs, if we wilfully misinterpret the language of ancient prophets, if we persist in understanding their words in their outward and material aspect only, and forget that before language had sanctioned a distinction between the concrete and the abstract, between the purely spiritual as opposed to the coarsely material, the intention of the speakers comprehended both the concrete and the abstract, both the material and the spiri- · tual, in a manner which has become quite strange to us, though it lives on in the language of every true poet. Unless we make allowance for this mental parallax, all our readings in the ancient skies will be, and must be, erroneous. Nay, I believe it can be proved that more than half of the difficulties in the history of religious thought owe their origin to this constant misinterpretation of ancient language by modern language, of ancient thought by modern thought.

That much of what seems to us, and seemed to the best among the ancients, irrational and irreverent in the mythologies of India, Greece, and Italy can thus be removed, and that many of their childish fables can thus be read again in their original child-like sense, has been proved by the researches of Comparative Mythologists. The phase of language which gives rise, inevitably, we may say, to these misunderstandings, is earlier than the earliest literary documents. Its work in the Aryan languages was done before the time of the Veda, before the time of Homer, though its influence continues to be felt to a much later period.

Is it likely that the Semitic languages, and, more particularly, Hebrew, should, as by a miracle, have escaped the influence of a process which is inherent in the very nature and growth of language, which, in fact, may rightly be called an infantine disease, against which no precautions can be of any avail ?

I believe that the Semitic languages, for reasons which I explained on a former occasion, have suffered less from mythology than the Aryan languages, yet we have only to read the first chapters of Genesis in order to con

vince ourselves, that we shall never understand its ancient language rightly, unless we make allowance for the influence of ancient language on ancient thought. If we read, for instance, that after the first man was created, one of his ribs was taken out, and that rib made into a woman, every student of ancient language sees at once that this account must not be taken in its bare, literal sense. We need not dwell on the fact that in the first chapter of Genesis a far less startling account of the creation of man and woman had been given. What could be simpler, and therefore truer, than: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.' The question then is, how, after this account of the creation of man and woman, could there be a second account of the creation of man, of his lone estate in the garden of Eden, and of the removal of one of his ribs, which was to be made into a help meet for him?

Those who are familiar with the genius of ancient Hebrew, can hardly hesitate as to the

original intention of such traditions. Let us remember that when we, in our modern languages, speak of the selfsame thing, the Hebrews speak of the bone (N), the Arabs of the eye of a thing. This is a well known Semitic idiom, and it is not without analogies in other languages. 'Bone' seemed a telling expression for what we should call the innermost essence; 'eye' for what we should call the soul or self of a thing. In the ancient hymns of the Veda, too, a poet asks: Who has seen the first-born, when he who had no bones, i.e. no form, bore him that had bones?' i. e. when that which was formless assumed form, or, it may be, when that which had no essence, received an essence? And he goes on to ask: 'Where was the life, the blood, the soul of the world? Who sent to ask this from any that knew it?' In the ancient language of the Veda, bone, blood, breath, are all meant to convey more than what we should call their material meaning; but in course of time, the Sanskrit átman, meaning originally breath, dwindled away into a mere pronoun, and came to mean self. The same applies to the Hebrew 'etzem. Originally meaning bone,