The transition to what are formally called "Sacred Books" leaves a considerable {186} literature upon the boundary. The collection of the ancient national Finnic songs, made with so much patience by the Swedish Lonrott, under the name of the Kalevala, presents no claim to inspiration, but it is the poetical expression of the national religion. In the literature of the Eddas, the Volospa (p. 248) is a product of the prophetic spirit. After Herodotus remarked that Homer and Hesiod made the gods of the Greeks, the Homeric poems acquired more and more authority, until by the usage of centuries they gained a semi-canonical position. Lectures were given upon their sacred text, and the most extravagant methods of interpretation were employed to reconcile them with the world-view of philosophy. The ancient Egyptian accepted the "Book of the Dead" as his guide to the next world. Chapters of it were inscribed on the walls of his tomb, engraved on his coffin, or laid inside it with his mummy. It contained the charms needful for the preservation of his soul on its journey to the land of the West. Its authors were unknown, but it contained the secrets of the life to come. The "Bibles of Humanity," as the foundation-books of the great religions have been called, belong to one continent. Asia has been the mother of them all. The oldest takes shape in India in the Vedic hymns; and the immense literatures of Brahmanism, early and later Buddhism, and the Hinduism which {187} finally drove Buddhism off the field, follow in due course. Cognate in language with the immigrant Aryans, the ancient Persians preserved, amid many losses, some of the compositions of their prophet Zarathustra, mingled with religious documents of later date, known to modern students by the name Zend Avesta. Palestine produces Judaism, with its collection of national literature embracing law, history, prophecy, poetry, and wisdom. Judaism gives birth to Christianity, which sets its New Testament beside the Old; and Judaism and Christianity lie behind Mohammed and the Koran, where the person and the book blend in the closest union.