Christians may have leisure to worship God and to meditate upon the
duties they owe to Him. It is in recognition of this that we see tall
spires pointing heavenward, and churches opening their portals to the
inhabitants of crowded cities and to the dwellers in scattered villages.
In Christian lands the consciousness of men bears testimony to the
existence of God, but it is not in such lands only that this
consciousness exists and confirms belief in the Divine. In the earliest
times, long before history began to be written, such a consciousness was
prevalent, leading men to faith in and worship of a Being or Beings
infinitely greater than themselves, present with them and presiding,
though invisibly, over their destinies. The study of Comparative
Religion has shown how nearly the primeval inhabitants of lands widely
distant from each other were at one in the views they had come to
entertain. Hymns, prayers, precepts, and traditions are found in the
sacred books of the great religions of the East, and archaeologists have
deciphered on ancient monuments, and traced in primitive religious
rites, clear evidence of belief in the existence of the Divine. The
valleys of the Nile, of the Euphrates, and of the Tigris have revealed
facts for the theologian's benefit that are almost exhaustless. In the
Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in the religious hymns and the ritual of
which they formed part in the sacred literature of Babylonia, there is
proof that four thousand years ago hymns were sung in honour of the
gods, and prayers were offered to propitiate them and secure their
favour. But belief in God had place long before these hymns were sung or
these prayers offered. This is shown by the existence of words in the
most ancient hymns, prayers, and inscriptions which could not have been
used unless the ideas which they conveyed had already existed in men's
minds. These words--some of which are preserved in modern tongues--when
traced to their roots, help greatly to explain the character of early
religious thought, and prove the existence of a widely diffused belief