up parallel with the growth of the empire from small beginnings. At the head of many subordinate gods stands the ‘God of gods,’ to whom all the sacrifices and expressions of homage offered to the subordinate, so to speak, satrap-gods, are indirectly presented. He is adored in the temples built in honour of his subordinates (see supra, p. 122). He is the ‘God of Armies,’ just as the King of kings is ‘Lord of Armies.’ In a word, we have to do with a form of religion that combines absolute monarchy with Polytheism. And is it surprising, considering the influence exercised by the mighty Assyrian empire on Western Asia, the nations of which it surpassed in manners and culture, that this form of religion became the prevailing tone of theology throughout the region? Thus, while political division promotes in religion Polytheism, political unity and centralisation help the monotheistic development to break forth. As, when the political system is centralised, individuals only contribute to form a united political organism, and lose their personality in special functions which make each different from the other, so the idea of one common god arises and prevails over the many local deities, who are then subordinated to the former as their supreme Lord. In the Hebrew nation likewise it was the political centralisation which established itself in the epoch distinguished by the names of David and Solomon, which at the same time conduced to the confirmation of Monotheism. It cannot be known for certain what sort of worship it was that was practised at various places in the land beside the so-called ‘Ark of the Covenant’ (arôn hab-berîth), before David removed the Ark to the political centre, and Solomon erected the magnificent Temple, of which the Books of Kings and the Chronicles give so elaborate an architectural description. But it must be assumed that the monotheistic working-out of the Elôhîm-idea in the Hebrew nation coincided with the centralising movement, that is with the period when the king directed the religious sentiment of the whole people to Jerusalem. This religious development again became powerful and was greatly encouraged by the newly strengthened National spirit, the influence of which on the spiritual life of the people was traced in the preceding chapter. For since the Hebrew nation was conscious of occupying a position of strict alienation from the tribes among and near which it dwelt, the exclusive tendency and negative character of this consciousness clung also to its conception of God, and thus it formed the idea of One God, who was the divine opposite to the gods of the nations, corresponding to the idea of the Hebrew nation as a nation opposed to the other nations. So long as the nation had no living consciousness of its national separation, and had not advanced to the point of saying ‘I am something quite different from you,’ no reason was forthcoming why the Hebrews should hold a