This unity of God is not in any way derogated from by the ascription to him of attributes. For the latter are of two kinds, "essential" and "active." We call the first essential because they are permanent attributes of God, which he had before creation and will continue to have when the world has ceased to be. These attributes are three in number, Existing, One, Eternal. We have already proved every one of them. Now these attributes do not imply change in the essence of God. They are to be understood in the sense of denying their opposites, _i. e._, that he is not multiple, non-existent or newly come into being. They also imply each other as can easily be shown, _i. e._, every one of the three implies the other two. We must understand therefore that they are really _one_ in idea, and if we could find one term to express the thought fully, we should not use three. But the three do not imply multiplicity in God. The "active" are those attributes which are ascribed to God by reason of his actions or effects on us. We are permitted to apply them to him because of the necessity which compels us to get to know of his existence so that we may worship him. The Biblical writers use them very frequently. We may divide these into two kinds: First, those which ascribe to God a corporeal form, such as (Gen. 1, 27), "And God created man in his image," and others of the same character. Second, those attributes which refer to corporeal movements and actions. These have been so interpreted by our ancient sages as to remove the corporeality from God by substituting the "Glory of God" for God as the subject of the movement or act in question. Thus, (Gen. 28, 13) "And behold the Lord stood above it," is rendered by the Aramaic translator, "and behold the _glory of God was present_ above it." Saadia deals with this matter at length in his "Emunot ve-Deot," in his commentary on Genesis, and on the book "Yezirah." So there is no need of going into detail here. We are all agreed that necessity compels us to speak of God in corporeal terms so that all may be made to know of God's existence. This they could not do if the prophets had spoken in metaphysical terms, for not everyone can follow such profound matters. But having come to the knowledge of God in this simpler though imperfect way, we can then advance to a more perfect knowledge of him. The intelligent and philosophical reader will lose nothing by the anthropomorphic form of the Bible, for he can remove the husk and penetrate to the kernel. But the simple reader would miss a very great deal indeed if the Bible were written in the language of philosophy, as he would not understand it and would remain without a knowledge of God.