A Comparative View of Religions | Page 8

case
with the ancient Semites, the Indians of the Veda, and the Greeks, as

yet independent of temple service and priestly constraint. The holy
places of the Germans were woods, and hills, and fountains, and in the
mysterious rustling of the leaves and in the murmuring of the waters
the pious spirit caught the breathing of the deity.[5] The father of the
house is priest, and the recognition by these races more than elsewhere
of worth in woman is apparent also in their religion. In the description
of the kingdom of the dead in the German-Norse mythology, Walhalla
is the abode of the heroes, hell the gathering place of the other dead.
Notwithstanding these still childish conceptions, there was revealed in
the moral character and heroic spirit of the German forefathers the
germ of a higher development, which makes the nations of Germany
and Northern Europe capable beyond others of a constantly higher
conception and estimation of the Christian religion.[6]
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE SEMITES.
I. THE PHOENICIANS, SYRIANS, BABYLONIANS,
CARTHAGINIANS, AND ARABIANS.
In the Semitic races the religious spirit rose above nature-worship in
the effort to separate God from nature, and to elevate him above nature
as Lord, Baal (plural Baalim, either from the different places where he
was worshiped, or the various names under which he was worshiped),
Bel, El, Adon (Adonis). Thus Bel among the Babylonians, Baal among
the Ammonites and Moabites, was the god of light, the lord of heaven,
the creator of mankind, who had his throne above the clouds and was
invoked on mountains.[7] Also the title Molech and Baal Molech to
designate the Supreme Being among the ancient Phoenicians and
Carthaginians, and the nations nearest related to Israel, the Moabites
and Ammonites, as well as the derived names Milcom (Kamos)
[Chemosh, Eng. ver.], among the Ammonites, and Melkartht at Tyre
and Carthage, indicate, like Baal, an original effort to conceive God as
the ruler of nature. Agreeing with this conception of the Deity, there is
manifest, as well in the worship of Baal as of Molech and the female
Astarte (Melecheth)[8] [Ashtaroth, Eng. ver.], worshiped with him,

partly in the abstinence from marriage, partly in the human sacrifice,
especially the sacrifice of the first-born, the aim, through abnegation of
the life of sense, and through the sacrifice, even though unnatural, of
what is dearest to man, to appease a divinity who as lord and governor
rules and subjects to himself the power of nature and every propensity
of sense.[9]
In spite of the effort to elevate the Deity as Lord and King above nature,
most of the Semitic nations gradually sank back into the old
nature-worship, and, uniting with the worship of the highest God, Baal
and Bel, that of a female divinity under the names of Baaltis, Beltis,
Aschera, Mylitta, they made religion to consist in the sacrifice of
chastity to the will of the Deity, as the fruitful, productive power of
nature, and thus fell into gross immorality.[10]
Religion appears in another form among the Semites in the worship of
the stars among the Babylonians and ancient Arabians. This astrolatry,
originally a kind of fetichism, became nature-worship, and gradually
rose to the worship of the intelligence manifested to our contemplation
in the movement of the heavenly luminaries. Astrology arose, and
religion no longer expressed itself in passive acquiescence, but was
united with the effort to guide the life by the knowledge to be drawn, as
men imagined, from the motion of the stars.
ISRAELITISH RELIGION.
a. Its origin. The patriarchal religion. Mosaism. Prophetism.
While most of the Semitic nations, in opposition to the effort to elevate
God above nature as lord and governor, returned to the old
nature-religion with its grossly sensual worship of the divine, and
others got no farther than to the conception of a deity, who, like a
consuming fire, stood opposed to nature, and was to be appeased and
propitiated by human sacrifices, there was developed among the
Israelitish people, gradually and in constantly higher measure, in
connection with a higher moral and religious disposition, the worship
of God as a being who, though distinct from nature, is yet not opposed
to it, and thus no longer demands human sacrifices, but obedience and

moral consecration.
The common origin of the religion of the Israelites and that of their
Semitic relations, though hardly evident even in the oldest monuments
of the Hebrew literature, appears from the following facts and
particulars: firstly, the composition of Israelitish names not only with
El, but also with Baal, such as Jerubbaal (adversary of Baal),
(Gideon),[11] Esbaal,[12] Meribbaal,[13] names which afterwards, on
account of the aversion which the ever-increasing distance in religion
between the Israelitish nation and the nations related to it must, from
the nature of the case, have inspired against the name