ty of
intercourse between man and God, and a revelation of God to man, depends
chiefly or exclusively on the conception which man has previously formed
of God and man. In all theological researches we must carefully bear in
mind that the idea of God is _our_ idea, which we have formed in part
through tradition, and in part by our own thinking; and we must not forget
that existence formed an essential attribute of this idea, whatever
opposition may have been raised against the ontological proof in later
times. After what we have seen of the true relationship between thought
and speech, it follows that the name, and with it the idea of a divine
being, can only proceed from man. God is and remains _our_ God. We can
have a knowledge of Him only through our inner consciousness, not through
our senses. God Himself has no more imparted His name to mankind than the
fixed stars and planets to which we have given names, although we only
see, but do not hear or touch them. This must be absolutely clear to us
before we dare speak of the possibility or impossibility of a revelation.

Now it is very useful, before we treat of our own idea of a revelation
emanating from God, to look round among other nations and see how they
reached the idea of a revelation. We see in India that a number of hymns
in an ancient dialect and in fixed metres were preserved by oral
tradition--the method was wonderful, but is authenticated by history--before
there could have been a thought of reducing them to writing. These hymns
contain very little that would appear to be too high or too deep for an
ordinary human poet. They are of great interest to us because they make
known, as clearly as possible, the sound of the oldest Aryan language, and
the nature of the oldest Aryan gods. As Professor Deussen, in his valuable
History of Philosophy says, (I, 83), the Vedic religion, which he at the
same time calls the oldest philosophy, is richer in disclosures than any
other in the world. In this sense he very properly calls the study of the
Rigveda the high school of the science of religion, so that as he says no
one can discuss these matters without a knowledge of it. This unique
distinction rests, as he truly remarks, on the fact, "That the process on
which originally all gods depend, the personification of the phenomena of
nature, while it is more or less obscured by all other religions, in the
Rigveda still takes place, so to speak, before our eyes visibly and