The main gift of the Hebrews to the world was the Jewish religion, a more spiritual religion than any that had preceded it, and based on a conception of one God, a holy God. The ideas held of immortality and of judgment after death for the deeds done in this life were not entirely new, but the conception of a holy and beneficent Deity was new; and it was so inspiring and stimulating a conception that it lifted the Jews at once to a moral and spiritual plane higher than any people had ever lived on before. It constituted a step also directly toward the Christian religion--which also was born in Syria; in Palestine. That the conception and establishment of the Jewish religion was an invention may not be admitted by some; but the author respectfully asks attention to the sense in which he uses the word invention in this book, and points out that they constituted an invention in that sense. That it was a beneficent invention, and that it helped the human race spiritually in a way analogous to that in which the invention of many mechanical devices helped it materially, does not seem hard to realize. For in both cases the race was transported away from savagery and toward high civilization; and in both cases there was first a conception of something desirable, then a constructive effort to develop it, and finally its production. The Phoenicians lived just north of the Jews, and possessed a territory smaller than that of any other people who ever exercised an equal influence on history; for it embraced merely a little strip of land hardly longer than a hundred and twenty miles from north to south, or wider on the average than twelve miles from east to west. It bordered on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and was shut off by the mountains of Lebanon from Syria, that lay due east. The Phoenicians were a people of extraordinary enterprise and initiative. Inventors are men of extraordinary enterprise and initiative. How much the Phoenicians are to be credited with the invention of sailing vessels, we have no means of knowing; but we do know that (with the possible exception of the Egyptians) the Phoenicians were more identified with early navigation by sailing vessels and by vessels pulled by oars than any other people. It is even known that Phoenician vessels were navigating the Eastern Mediterranean, both under sails and under oars, as long ago as 1500 B. C. So, while we should not be justified in asserting positively that the Phoenicians were the inventors and developers of sailing vessels and of vessels pulled by banks of oars and steered by rudders, we may declare with ample reason that probably they were.