Certainly, not all the religious thinkers of Babylonia held these low conceptions. In some of their prayers and hymns they rise to lofty spiritual and ethical conceptions which compare quite favorably with expressions found in the Old Testament. In a hymn addressed to Shamash, the sun-god, are found these lines: Who plans evil--his horn thou dost destroy, Whoever in fixing boundaries annuls rights. The unjust judge thou restrainest with force. {174} Whoever accepts a bribe, who does not judge justly--on him thou imposest sin. But he who does not accept a bribe, who has a care for the oppressed, To him Shamash is gracious, his life he prolongs. The judge who renders a just decision Shall end in a palace, the place of princes shall be his dwelling. * * * * * The seed of those who act unjustly shall not flourish. What their mouth declares in thy presence Thou shalt burn it up, what they purpose wilt thou annul. Thou knowest their transgressions; the declaration of the wicked thou dost cast aside. Every one wherever he may be is in thy care. Thou directest their judgments, the imprisoned dost thou liberate. Thou hearest, O Shamash, petition, prayer, and appeal, Humility, prostration, petitioning, and reverence. With loud voice the unfortunate one cries to thee. The weak, the exhausted, the oppressed, the lowly, Mother, wife, maid appeal to thee, He who is removed from his family, he that dwelleth far from his city.[15] Far be it from the writer to rob the religion of Babylonia of any of its glory. Nevertheless, he ventures to assert without any fear of contradiction that we may search the pantheon of Babylon, from one end to the other, and we shall not find one god who in nature and character can compare with the Jehovah of Israel as proclaimed by the great prophets and glorified by the sweet singers of the nation, a God "merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth." We may well speak of a "great gulf, {175} which is fixed between primitive Semitic conceptions of God and the noble spiritual views of him set forth under divine illumination by Isaiah."[16] It is due to this fundamental difference in the conception of the nature and character of Deity that the religion of Israel became "a living and ethical power, growing and increasing until Jesus, greatest of the prophets, completed the message of his predecessors," and Christianity was born.