the
ancestors of our race, and had been invoked by a name which has never
been excelled by any other name?" And again, on the same subject, he
says: "If a critical examination of the ancient language of the Jews
leads to no worse results than those which have followed from a careful
interpretation of the petrified language of ancient India and Greece, we
need not fear; we shall be gainers, not losers. Like an old precious
medal, the ancient religion, after the rust of ages has been removed,
will come out in all its purity and brightness; and the image which it
discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations
upon earth; and the superscription, when we can read it again, will be,
not only in Judea, but in the languages of all the races of the world,
the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed--revealed in
the heart of man."[137]

The late Professor Banergea, of Calcutta, in a publication entitled "The
Aryan Witness," not only maintained the existence of monotheism in the
early Vedas, but with his rare knowledge of Sanskrit and kindred
tongues, he gathered from Iranian as well as Hindu sources many
evidences of a monotheism common to all Aryans. His conclusions derive
special value from the fact that he was a high caste Hindu, and was not
only well versed in the sacred language, but was perfectly familiar with
Hindu traditions and modes of thought. He was as well qualified to judge
of early Hinduism as Paul was of Judaism, and for the same reason. And
from his Hindu standpoint, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, though
afterward a Christian convert, he did not hesitate to declare his
belief, not only that the early Vedic faith was monotheistic, but that
it contained traces of that true revelation, once made to men.[138]

In the same line we find the testimony of the various types of revived
Aryanism of our own times. The Brahmo Somaj, the Arya Somaj, and other
similar organizations, are not only all monotheistic, but they declare
that monotheism was the religion of the early Vedas. And many other
Hindu reforms, some of them going as far back as the twelfth century,
have been so many returns to monotheism. A recent Arya catechism
published by Ganeshi, asserts in its first article that there is one
only God, omnipotent, infinite, and eternal. It proceeds to show that
the Vedas present but one, and that when hymns were addressed to Agni,
Vayu, Indra, etc., it was only a use of different na