3. Another difference between ancient Pantheists and ourselves was the absence in their case of any religious creed, sanctioned by supernatural authority and embodied in a definite form, like that of the three Anglican creeds, or the Westminster Confession of Faith. Not that those ancients supposed themselves to be without a revelation. For the Vedas, at least, were considered to be of divine authority, and their words, metres, and grammar were regarded with a superstitious awe, such as reminds us of what has been called the "bibliolatry" of the Jewish Rabbis. But subject to this verbal veneration, the Rishis, or learned divines, used the utmost freedom in regard to the forced and fanciful interpretations extorted from the sacred text, a freedom which again reminds us of the paradoxical caprice shown by some schools of Jewish Rabbis in their treatment of the volume they professed to regard with awe. The various finite gods, such as Vishnu, Indra, Krishna, Marut, or Varuna, were not the subjects of any church creed chanted every day, and carefully stereotyped in the tender minds of children. On the contrary, various rôles were assigned by successive generations to these divinities. So that, for instance, Varuna was at one time the god of the ocean, and at another of the sky. But the uniform tendency of all poets and Rishis alike was to seek, beyond all these gods, one unbeginning, unending, and all comprehensive Being, from whom these "devas" emerged, and into whom they must return. Not only so, but it is clearly suggested in many passages, of which an instance will presently be quoted, that the Eternal, called Brahma who was the true Self of all gods, was also the true Self of man and bird and beast. So that, in fact, notwithstanding the illogical emanation theory, He was the only real Being, the All in All. [Sidenote: Illustration from the Upanishads.] [Sidenote: Monism.]