, saying "I am that which I am"; in relation
to man, who is akin to Him as a self-conscious rational and moral being,
He is the living Fountain of all that knowledge and spirituality for which
men long, and in which alone they may find contentment and bliss.

Thus the God of Judaism, the world's great _I Am_, forms a complete
contrast, not only to the lifeless powers of nature and destiny, which
were worshiped by the ancient pagans, but also to the God of modern
paganism, a God divested of all personality and self-consciousness, such
as He is conceived of by the new school of Christian theology, with its
pantheistic tendency. I refer to the school of Ritschl, which strives to
render the myth of the man-god philosophically intelligible by teaching
that God reaches self-consciousness only in the perfect type of man, that
is, Christ, while otherwise He is entirely immanent, one with the world.
All the more forcibly does Jewish monotheism insist upon its doctrine that
God, in His continual self-revelation, is the supermundane and
self-conscious Ruler of both nature and history. "I am the Lord, that is
My name, and My glory will I not give to another,"--so says the God of
Judaism.(178)

4. The Jewish God-idea, of course, had to go through many stages of
development before it reached the concept of a transcendental and
spiritual god. It was necessary first that the Decalogue and the Book of
the Covenant prohibit most stringently polytheism and every form of
idolatry, and second that a strictly imageless worship impress the people
with the idea that Israel's God was both invisible and incorporeal.(179)
Yet a wide step still intervened from that stage to the complete
recognition of God as a purely spiritual Being, lacking all qualities
perceptible to the senses, and not resembling man in either his inner or
his outer nature. Centuries of gradual ripening of thought were still
necessary for the growth of this conception. This was rendered still more
difficult by the Scriptural references to God in His actions and His
revelations, and even in His motives, after a human pattern. Israel's
sages required centuries of effort to remove all anthropomorphic and
anthropopathic notions of God, and thus to elevate Him to the highest
realm of spirituality.(180)

5. In this process of development two points of view demand consideration.
We must not overlook the fact that the perfectly clear distinction which
we make between the sensory and