Semitic mind. Eloah was at first the name for God, and as it is found in all the dialects of the Semitic family except the Phenician (Renan, p. 61), it may probably be considered as the most ancient name of the Deity, sanctioned at a time when the original Semitic speech had not yet branched off into national dialects. When this name was first used in the plural, it could only have signified, like every plural, many Eloahs, and such a plural could only have been formed after the various names of God had become the names of independent deities, i. e. during a polytheistic stage. The transition from this into the monotheistic stage could be effected in two ways--either by denying altogether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into devils, as the Zoroastrians did with the Devas of their Brahmanic ancestors; or by taking a higher view, and looking upon the Elohim as so many names, invented with the honest purpose of expressing the various aspects of the Deity, though in time diverted from their original purpose. This is the view taken by St. Paul of the religion of the Greeks when he came to declare unto them 'Him whom they ignorantly worshipped,' and the same view was taken by Abraham. Whatever the names of the Elohim, worshipped by the numerous clans of his race, Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim, comprehending by one name everything that ever had been or could be called divine, became the name with which the monotheistic age was rightly inaugurated,--a plural, conceived and construed as a singular. Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore there could be no other God. From this point of view the Semitic name of the Deity, Elohim, which seemed at first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes perfectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than anything else that the true monotheism could not have risen except on the ruins of a polytheistic faith. It is easy to scoff at the gods of the heathen, but a cold-hearted philosophical negation of the gods of the ancient world is more likely to lead to Deism or Atheism than to a belief in the One living God, the Father of all mankind, 'who hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.'