74 SEMITIC LANGUAGE 



Religion, describes it as " a belief and worship of the supreme mind and 

 will," and here the main element in Newman's definition is entirely 

 ignored. 



I need not pursue this question further, or add to these quotations. 

 I proceed in the next place to ask what relation do Semitics sustain 

 to religion as thus defined? The importance of holding to this 

 definition is obvious. Suppose I were to take Spencer's definition 

 of religion as my starting-point, my subject would then run: The 

 Relation of Semitics to a Feeling of Wonder in the Presence of the 

 Unknown. How could I, how could you, discuss a question like that? 



This historical and genetic relation of Semitic thought to religion 

 is unparalleled in degree, if not in kind. Semitic thought has been 

 the matrix whence have been born three of the greatest historical, 

 still extant, and dominant religions, Judaism, Christianity, and 

 Mohammedanism. And, since the study of Semitics is the study of 

 Semitic thought as it has expressed itself more especially in language 

 and literature, the subject of the hour possesses a practical interest 

 and is of paramount importance. It is not a question of academic 

 interest solely, but one that may well engage the attention of pew 

 and pulpit, of all men who try to discover truth or find their relations 

 and do their duty in the world. .But the subject as a whole cannot 

 be discussed in a single lecture. 



Let us take the first element of religion as we have defined it, 

 man's thought of the world-order of which he forms a part, and ask 

 what relations has Semitics to that. Or let us put the question differ- 

 ently : How and to what extent is that thought affected by the study 

 of Semitics? And, since the study of Semitics, as distinguished from 

 some branch of Semitics, is confined practically to Christian scholars, 

 or scholars in Christian nations, we shall deal with that thought as 

 it exists among Christians. To the preceding question the Semitist 

 must answer, it is affected in many ways and to a much greater 

 extent than is popularly supposed. Let us take the God of Christian 

 thought. Semitics, so far as I can discover, has no positive contribu- 

 tion to make to our present understanding of the nature of God. 

 Polytheistic Semites and monotheistic Semites alike believed in the 

 personality of Deity. On the nature of the ultimate and eternal 

 cause, or principle, we cannot now expect to learn better than we 

 know from a literature that was closed for the most part two thou- 

 sand years ago. But I think Semitics does aid us in arriving at some 

 reasonable conclusion with respect to the origin of the idea of a God, 

 or gods, and this points clearly in the direction of an animistic doc- 

 trine. It is true, of course, that when we meet a race in the possession 

 of a literature it is no longer in a primitive stage, but we are fortun- 

 ate enough to be able in the Semitic field to catch the people almost, 

 as it were, in passage from the earlier to the more advanced state. 



