The religion of the Aryan races, in its beginning, was a very simple and a very noble one. They looked up to the heavens and saw the bright sun, and the light and beauty and glory of the day. They saw the day fade into night and the clouds draw themselves across the sky, and then they saw the dawn and the light and life of another day. Seeing these things, they felt that some Power higher than man ordered and guided them; and to this great Power they gave the name of _Dyaus_, from a root-word which means "to shine." And when, out of the forces and forms of Nature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus became _Dyaus pitar_, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in Europe, the _Dyaus pitar_ of the central Asian land became the Zeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and the first part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to _God_. So, as Professor Max Muller tells us, the descendants of the ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can do but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as near as near can be; they can but combine the self-same words and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father, which art in Heaven.'" The feeling which the Aryans had towards the Heaven-Father is very finely shown in one of the oldest hymns in the _Rig Veda_, or the Book of Praise--a hymn written 4,000 years ago, and addressed to Varuna, or the All-Surrounder, the ancient Hindu name for the chief deity:-- "Let me not, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy! If I go trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind, Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy! Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone wrong; Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy!"