el as proclaimed by the great
prophets and glorified by the sweet singers of the nation, a God
"merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness
and truth." We may well speak of a "great gulf, {175} which is fixed
between primitive Semitic conceptions of God and the noble spiritual
views of him set forth under divine illumination by Isaiah."[16] It is
due to this fundamental difference in the conception of the nature and
character of Deity that the religion of Israel became "a living and
ethical power, growing and increasing until Jesus, greatest of the
prophets, completed the message of his predecessors," and Christianity
was born.

From the conception of Deity we may pass to a brief consideration of
religious institutions and beliefs. One of the most important results
of recent archaeological discoveries has been to show that many of the
religious rites, customs, and institutions of Babylonia and Assyria, as
also of Egypt, resemble closely those assigned in the Old Testament to
the Hebrews. This cannot appear strange when we remember that Israel
was a branch of the great Semitic race, which was, at the time of its
separation from the common stock, in possession of many of the common
Semitic notions and practices. It would have been impossible to rid
the Israelite consciousness of all of these; therefore the religious
leaders of the Hebrews took the better way of retaining the familiar
forms and pouring into them a new, higher, and more spiritual
significance.

One of the earliest religious institutions recognized in the Old
Testament is the Sabbath. The {176} very fact that it is mentioned in
the story of creation shows that, whatever the reason for its
observance among the Hebrews, it was recognized as a very ancient
institution. Has archaeology thrown any light on the origin of the
Sabbath day?[17] In his first lecture on "Babel and Bible," Delitzsch
answers the question in these words: "There can therefore be scarcely
the shadow of a doubt that in the last resort we are indebted to this
ancient nation on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris for the
plenitude of blessings that flows from our day of Sabbath, or Sunday,
rest."[18] This statement was soon criticized, because it seemed to
give too much credit to the Babylonians, and Delitzsch later modified
the statement and claimed, simply, that the Hebrew Sabbath ultimately
is rooted in a Babylonian institution.[19] No exception c