How then did the Hebrews, under Moses and the later prophets, originate a system so widely different?  Their God was above nature, not in it.  He stood alone, unaccompanied by secondary deities; he made no part of a triad; he was not associated with a female representative.  His worship required purity, not pollution; its aim was holiness, and its spirit humane, not cruel.  Monotheistic in its spirit from the first, it became an absolute monotheism in its development.  Whence this wide departure in the Hebrews from the religious tendencies and belief of the surrounding nations, who spoke the same language and belonged to the same stock?

M. Renan considers this a question of race.[347] He says:  “The Indo-European race, distracted by the variety of the universe, never by itself arrived at monotheism.  The Semitic race, on the other hand, guided by its firm and sure sight, instantly unmasked Divinity, and without reflection or reasoning attained the purest form of religion that humanity has known.”  But the Assyrians, Babylonians, Arabians before Mohammed, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians, and perhaps the Egyptians, belonged to the Semitic race.  Yet none of these nations attained to any monotheism purer than that of the Veda or the Avesta.  The Arabs, near relations of the Hebrews, were divided between a worship like that of Babylon and Sabaeism, or star-worship.  No doubt in all these Semitic families the idea of one supreme god lay behind that of the secondary deities; but this was also the case in the Aryan races.  And in both this primitive monotheism receded instead of becoming more distinct, with the single exception of the Hebrews.  M. Renan’s view is not, therefore, supported by the facts.  We must look further to find the true cause, and therefore are obliged to examine somewhat in detail the main points of Hebrew history.  It would be easy, but would not accord with our plan, to accept the common Christian explanation, and say, “Monotheism was a direct revelation to Moses.”  For we are now not able to assume such a revelation, and are obliged to consider the subject from the outside, from the stand-point of pure history.

Sec. 2.  Abraham; or, Judaism as the family Worship of a Supreme Being.

We have been so accustomed to regard the Jewish religion as a part of our own, and so to look at it from within, that it is hard to take the historic position, and to look at it from without.  But to compare it with other religions, and to see what it really is and is not, this is necessary.  It becomes more difficult to assume the attitude of an impartial observer, because of the doctrine of verbal inspiration, so universally taught in the Protestant Church.  From childhood we have looked on the Old Testament as inspired throughout, and all on the same level of absolute infallibility.  There is no high, no low, no degrees of certitude or probability, where every word is assumed to be the very word of God.  But those who still