274 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
The seal of truth has been impressed upon language, and men are utter- 
ing deeper things than they know, and sometimes asserting great prin- 
ciples against themselves. Language has influenced opinions and beliefs 
and religion has influenced language. The stream of language has 
revealed in words, and roots of words, the arts, habits, life and religion 
of the prehistoric Aryan race. 
As some ethnologists assert that there are no atheistic peoples, may 
we not also say that there are no atheistic languages? In the languages 
of numerous tribes there exist words for spirit, sin, sacrifice and God; 
the latter word not having the same meaning in all. Among the Cree 
Indians the word used for God is Kitcemtnito= Big Spirit,and among 
the Blackfeet Omtiqkatos = The Great Sun, and Apistotoki =the Creator: 
Kinon=our Father as a term for God is the apparent result of missionary 
teaching. Missionaries are apt to believe that the languages are athe- 
istic, because they do not find a word for God, having the same definite 
meaning as it conveys to the Christian mind and heart, just as they 
might say that the tribes have no religion because it is different from 
the Christian religion. But there are tribes such as are found in Austra- 
lia which have no word for tree, fish or bird, yet they are not ignorant 
of these things. Worship is given by some of our Canadian Indians to 
the sun, and there are gods of greater and lesser degree. The languages 
reveal the names of these several deities, one of which seems to occupy 
the chief place, and though the chief deity differs from the supreme 
being of the Jews and Christians, we may call these peoples and lan- 
guages theistic in the sense of having a chief deity. As there are no 
tribes without some kind of religion, so there are no agnostic languages. 
The religious ideas may be crude and the system very imperfect, yet 
there is some form of religion of whose meaning we learn by a study of 
the native tongues. 
The polytheistic languages reveal a worship of single spirits as sun, 
storms and lightning, mountains and rivers; and ancestral spirits, who re- 
tain some cognizance of human affairs and exercise power for good or 
evil over men and things, are also worshipped. Max Miiller assures us 
that the Semitic races had a number of names for Deity, as shown in the 
Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and in the monotheistic creeds of Jews, 
Mohammedans and Christians. The worship of the Semitic nations 
was a worship of God in history, as God affecting the destinies of in- 
dividuals, races and nations. The names of Semitic deities expressed 
moral qualities generally, as the Strong, the Exalted, the Lord, the 
King, and seldom grew into divine personalities, definite in their out- 
ward appearance. Many ancient Semitic gods had a tendency to flow 
