inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held
Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh. But if
Jahveh was thus supposed to differ only in degree from the
undoubtedly zoomorphic or anthropomorphic "gods of the nations,"
why is it to be assumed that he also was not thought of as
having a human shape? It is possible for those who forget that
the time of the great prophetic writers is at least as remote
from that of Saul as our day is from that of Queen Elizabeth, to
insist upon interpreting the gross notions current in the
earlier age and among the mass of the people by the refined
conceptions promulgated by a few select spirits centuries later.
But if we take the language constantly used concerning the Deity
in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, or
Kings, in its natural sense (and I am aware of no valid reason
which can be given for taking it in any other sense), there
cannot, to my mind, be a doubt that Jahveh was conceived by
those from whom the substance of these books is mainly derived,
to possess the appearance and the intellectual and moral
attributes of a man; and, indeed, of a man of just that type
with which the Israelites were familiar in their stronger and
intellectually abler rulers and leaders. In a well-known passage
in Genesis (i. 27) Elohim is said to have "created man in his
own image, in the image of Elohim created he him." It is "man"
who is here said to be the image of Elohim--not man's soul
alone, still less his "reason," but the whole man. It is obvious
that for those who call a manlike ghost Elohim, there could be
no difficulty in conceiving any other Elohim under the same
aspect. And if there could be any doubt on this subject, surely
it cannot stand in the face of what we find in the fifth
chapter, where, immediately after a repetition of the statement