so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, [Greek: Zeus en,
Zeus estin, Zeus essetai o megale Zeu], 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.

But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It
resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El,
and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
of polytheism. Lik