them by persecutions and sufferings, and that of a one merciful god evolved from it, but Assyria went through no such schooling and retained its arrogant prosperity down to the era of its disappearance from history with the fall of Nineveh; but it is easy to see that the course of events might have been different, and Monotheism might have been evolved from the conception of Assur. These, however, are speculations relating to a much later period than the primitive religion with which we are principally concerned. It is remarkable how many of our modern religious conceptions find an almost exact counterpart in those of this immensely remote period. Incarnations, emanations, atonements, personifications of Divine attributes, are all there, and also the subtle metaphysical theories by which the human intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries of the unknowable, endeavours to account for the existence of good and evil, and to reconcile multiplicity of manifestation with unity of essence. If Wordsworth sings of a "sense sublime Of something far more deeply interposed, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things," he conveys the fundamental idea which was at the bottom of these earliest religions, and which has been perpetuated in the East through their successors, Brahmanism and Buddhism--the idea of Pantheism, or of an universe which is one with its First Cause, and not a mechanical work called into existence from without by a personal Creator. An ancient priest of Egypt or Chaldæa might have written these verses of the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, only he would have written Horus or Bel for the "setting sun"; Ea for the "round ocean"; Anur for the "sky," and so on. Side by side with these intellectual and philosophical conceptions of these ancient religions, we find the element of personal piety occupying a place which contrasts wonderfully with the childish and superstitious idea of evil spirits, magical spells, and omens. We read in the same collections of tablets, of mares bringing forth dogs and women lions; and psalms, which in their elevation of moral tone and intensity of personal devotion might readily be mistaken for the Hebrew Psalms attributed to David. There is a large collection of what are known as "the Penitential Psalms," in which the Chaldæan penitent confesses his sins, pleads ignorance, and sues for mercy, almost in the identical words of the sweet singer of Israel. In one of these, headed "The complaints of the repentant heart," we find such verses as these-- "I eat the food of wrath, and drink the waters of anguish." * * * * * "Oh, my God, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins.