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202 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
children, or if on the other side it fails to satisfy the requirements of men, it has lost its vitality, and it becomes either mere superstition or mere philosophy.
If I have succeeded in expressing myself clearly, I think you will"understand in what sense it may be said that there is truth in all religions, even in the lowest. The intention which led to the first utterance of a name like sky, used no longer in its material sense, but in a higher sense, was right. The spirit was willing, but language was weak. The mental process was not, as commonly supposed, an identification of the definite idea of deity with sky. Such a process is hardly conceivable. It was, on the contrary, a first attempt at defining the indefinite impression of deity by a name that should approximately or metaphorically sender at least one of its most prominent features. The first framer of that name of the deity, I repeat it again, could as little have thought of the material heaven as we do when we speak of the kingdom of heaven?
And now let us observe another feature of ancient religion that has often been so startling, but which, if we only remember what is the nature of ancient language, becomes likewise perfectly intelligible. It is well known that ancient languages are particularly rich in synonymes, or, to speak more correctly, that in them the same object is called by many names—is, in fact, polyonymous. While in modern languages most objects have one name only, we find in ancient Sanskrit, in ancient Greek and Arabic, a large choice of words for the same object. This is perfectly natural.
1 Medhurst, 'Inquiry,' p. 20.
