“No! I think not. The Jehovah of the Jews underwent many changes and developments with the growth of the Hebrew people; and in many of their writings He is represented as a passionate, vindictive, and even unreasonable and unjust God, whose passions were modified by human arguments. And, so far from being a universal God of all, He was specially the God of the Hebrews, and is so constantly represented in their Scriptures. He comes down upon earth and interferes personally in the doings of men, and talks with them, and discusses questions with them, and sometimes even takes their advice. In process of time this notion is modified, and assumes a nobler type; but He is never the Universal Father, nor the God whose essence is Love,—never, that is, until the coming of Christ, who first enunciated the idea that God is love,—rejoicing over the saving of man, far and above all human passions. ‘Vengeance is mine’ was the original idea of Jehovah; and He was feared and worshiped by the Jews as their peculiar God, whose chosen people they were. As for his unity, whatever may have been the popular superstitions of the Greeks and Romans, God is recognized by the greatest and purest minds as one and indivisible, the Father of all, who commands all, who creates all, who is invisible and omnipotent. Do you not remember the fragment of the Sibylline verses preserved by Lactantius,[25] S. Theophilus Antiochenus, and S. Justinus, where it is said that Zeus was one being alone, self-creating, from whom all things are made, who beholds all mortals, but whom no mortal can behold?— Εἷς δ’ ἔστ’ αὐτογενής· ἑνὸς ἔκγονα πάντα τέτυκται, Ἐν δ’ αὐτοῖς αὐτὸς περιγίγνεται· οὐδέ τις αὐτὸν Εἰσοράᾳ θνητῶν, αὐτὸς δέ γε πάντας ὁρᾶται. So, also, Pindar cries out:— ‘Τί Θεός;’ τί τὸ πᾶν. So again, in the same spirit, the Appian hymn says of Zeus:— Ἓν κράτος, εἷς δαίμων γένετο μέγας οὐρανὸν αἴθων Ἓν δὲ τὰ πάντα τέτυκται· ἐν ᾧ τάδε πάντα κυκλεῖται. And Euripides exclaims, ‘Where is the house, the fabric reared by man, that could contain the immensity of God?’ Ποῖος δ’ ἂν οἶκος, τεκτόνων πλασθεὶς ὑπὸ Δέμας, τὸ Θεῖον περιβάλλοι τοίχων πτυχαῖς, and adds that the true God needs no sacrifices on his altar. And Æschylus, in like manner, says:— Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ’ οὐρανὸς, Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα, χὥτι τῶν δ’ ὑπέρτερον. And Sophocles, also in similar lines, proclaims the unity and universality of God. And Theocritus, in his ‘Idylls,’ echoes the same sentiment. The same cast of thought, the same lofty idea of God, is found among the ancient Romans. Lucan exclaims in his ‘Pharsalia:’— ‘Jupiter est quod cumque vides, quo cumque moveris.’ Valerius Soranus makes him the one universal, omnipotent God, the Father and Mother of us all:— ‘Jupiter omnipotens, regum rerumque deumque _Progenitor genetrix_que deum deus unus et omnes.’[26]