THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 83 



became extinct, remaining only as the sacred and 

 learned language of religion and law. The Semitic 

 Assyrian adopted and gradually transformed the 

 religion of the Accadians, and became the dominant 

 power in Chaldea. Abraham, a Semite, came out of 

 Ur of the Chaldees; and the religion of the Semitic 

 Assyrian Chaldeans became in a modified form the 

 religion of the Hebrews. The word for *Sabbath in 

 the Hebrew Old Testament is an Accadian word, 

 and the ritual is in the main similar to the Accadian 

 ritual. The religion of the Hebrews developed, under 

 the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and his Apostles, 

 into Christianity, and the key-note of Christianity, as 

 of Buddhism, is love. 



No matter what difference of opinion there may be 

 with regard to the foregoing account of the growth of 

 religious thought, all will agree with the conclusion 

 that those two religions exalt love. 



Christendom, and Buddhadom, have been com- 

 pared to large trees, and their tap roots go down to 

 the Aryans and their Vedas, and even deeper to a 

 still more primitive form of religious thought. 



Confucianism, and the Greek philosophies, if they 

 did not attain to the fulness and beauty of the theory 

 of love developed in Buddhism and Christianity, at 

 least gave indications of an idea of that principle; 

 and in the religion of ancient Egyptt traces of the 



* And the word Elohim (Gods) is plural (the translation "God" 

 is an arbitrary translation) probably pointing to an early use in that 

 plural sense. 



t Andrew Lang appears to think that this is true of the religion or 

 some savages. 



