aves and in the
murmuring of the waters the pious spirit caught the breathing of the
deity.[5] The father of the house is priest, and the recognition by
these races more than elsewhere of worth in woman is apparent also in
their religion. In the description of the kingdom of the dead in the
German-Norse mythology, Walhalla is the abode of the heroes, hell the
gathering place of the other dead. Notwithstanding these still childish
conceptions, there was revealed in the moral character and heroic spirit
of the German forefathers the germ of a higher development, which makes
the nations of Germany and Northern Europe capable beyond others of a
constantly higher conception and estimation of the Christian
religion.[6]

CHAPTER III.

THE RELIGION OF THE SEMITES.

I. THE PHOENICIANS, SYRIANS, BABYLONIANS, CARTHAGINIANS, AND ARABIANS.

In the Semitic races the religious spirit rose above nature-worship in
the effort to separate God from nature, and to elevate him above nature
as Lord, Baal (plural Baalim, either from the different places where he
was worshiped, or the various names under which he was worshiped), Bel,
El, Adon (Adonis). Thus Bel among the Babylonians, Baal among the
Ammonites and Moabites, was the god of light, the lord of heaven, the
creator of mankind, who had his throne above the clouds and was invoked
on mountains.[7] Also the title Molech and Baal Molech to designate the
Supreme Being among the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and the
nations nearest related to Israel, the Moabites and Ammonites, as well
as the derived names Milcom (Kamos) [Chemosh, Eng. ver.], among the
Ammonites, and Melkartht at Tyre and Carthage, indicate, like Baal, an
original effort to conceive God as the ruler of nature. Agreeing with
this conception of the Deity, there is manifest, as well in the worship
of Baal as of Molech and the female Astarte (Melecheth)[8] [Ashtaroth,
Eng. ver.], worshiped with him, partly in the abstinence from marriage,
partly in the human sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of the
first-born, the aim, through abnegation of the life of sense, and
through the sacrifice, even though unnatural, of what is dearest to man,
to appease a divinity who as lord and governor rules and subjects to
himself the power of nature and every propensity of sense.[9]

In spite of the effort to elevate the Deity as Lord and King above
nature, most of the Semitic nations gradually sank back into the old
nature