m which there is no
escape. His religious convictions, therefore, are apt to be carried
out to their utmost extent, even at the cost of great and painful
sacrifices. Religion admits with the Semite of less compromise, and
is less affected by fancy, than with the Aryan; it is, in fact, a
more practical matter. The result proves to be that the Semitic mind
brings religious ideas to bear on life and conduct with the greatest
possible force; the substance is more, the form less, than is the
case elsewhere.

When we ask for the common type of working Semitic religion, where
are we to look for it? Not in Babylonia; the characteristic
Babylonian religion is Semitic, but late Semitic; it has received the
impress of high civilisation and of empire. Nor need we look for it
in the town life of Phenicia. It is in the seclusion of the Arabian
peninsula that we find it, in the district, as we saw, now regarded
as the cradle of the Semitic race, where life continues to this day
little changed from what it was before the days of Abraham. There the
type of society still exists with which scholars like Wellhausen and
Smith consider the earliest Semitic religion to be connected. It is a
society of nomad clans, which own no allegiance to any central
authority, which have no king and do not yet form a nation. This is a
stage of social growth which in every ancient people precedes the
rise of the nation and of monarchy. The Hebrews are rising out of
this stage when we first see them. Their neighbours the Moabites and
Canaanites have already passed beyond it. But all these peoples alike
have their root in a state of society when there was no large and
orderly community, but only a multitude of small and restless tribes,
when there was no written law, but only custom, and when there was no
central authority to execute justice, but it was left to a man's
fellow-clansmen to avenge his murder.

Now the religion of the clan, the ideas of which determine the
character of later Semitic systems, may be briefly described as
follows. Each clan has its own god, perhaps he was originally an
animal, at any rate he is the father or ancestor of the clan, he is
of the same blood with them, he belongs to them and to no other clan.
So far the assertion that the Semites are naturally monotheists is
true; but the same is true of all totemistic or clannish communities.
A man is born into a community with such a divine head, and the
worship of that god is the o