earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
thou canst tell?'

It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth the
day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). Shahar, the dawn, never becomes
an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.

Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
[Greek: Zeus kydistos megistos], if such words could have been framed
in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been