end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world as _created_ by God, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore, in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the mysterious forces at work in it--light and heat and life and growth--they admired and adored not the power of God, but his very presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them--in short, _an emanation of God_. The word "emanation" has been adopted as the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower, nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth and it cannot exist by itself without the flower--it is an emanation of the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening--it is an emanation of the earth. 7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations, which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions, they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed two TRIADS or "groups of three." The first triad comprised ANU, EA and BEL, the supreme gods of all--all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian list of divinities. ANU is ANA, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets, which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the Father of the Gods." EA, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of the Deep," the pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony, while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad, BEL, the son of EA. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the lord."