At this point a glance at the development of the religion of the Hindus may be of great service to us. Nowhere is the idea of revelation worked out so carefully as in their literature. They have a voluminous literature, treating of religion and philosophy, and they draw a very sharp distinction between revealed and unrevealed works (_S_ruti and Sm_ri_ti). Here much depends upon the name. Revealed meant originally nothing more than plain and clear, and when we speak of a revelation, in ordinary life, this is not much more than a communication. But erelong “reveal” was used in the special sense of a communication from a superhuman to a human being. The question of the possibility of such a communication raised little difficulty. But this possibility depends naturally on the prior conception of superhuman beings and of their relationship to human beings. So long as it was imagined that they occasionally assumed human form, and could mingle in very human affairs, a communication from a Not-man, I will not say a monster, presents no great difficulties. The Greeks went so far as to ascribe to men of earlier times a closer intercourse with the gods. But even with them the idea that man should not enter too closely into the presence of the gods breaks forth here and there, and Semele, who wished to be embraced by Zeus in all his glory, found her destruction in this ecstasy. As soon as the Deity was conceived in less human fashion, as in the Old Testament, intercourse between God and man became more and more difficult. In Genesis this intercourse is still represented very simply and familiarly, as when God walks about in the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve are ashamed of their nakedness before Him. Soon, however, a higher conception of God enters, so that Moses, for example (Exodus xxxiii. 23), may not see the face of Jehovah, but still ventures at least to look upon His back. The writer of the Fourth Gospel goes still farther and declares (i. 18), “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him.” Here we clearly see that the possibility of intercourse between man and God, and a revelation of God to man, depends chiefly or exclusively on the conception which man has previously formed of God and man. In all theological researches we must carefully bear in mind that the idea of God is _our_ idea, which we have formed in part through tradition, and in part by our own thinking; and we must not forget that existence formed an essential attribute of this idea, whatever opposition may have been raised against the ontological proof in later times. After what we have seen of the true relationship between thought and speech, it follows that the name, and with it the idea of a divine being, can only proceed from man. God is and remains _our_ God. We can have a knowledge of Him only through our inner consciousness, not through our senses.