The strangest thing, however, in this learned falsification is that it should have succeeded so well with people calling themselves Christians and clinging to that name often after they have given up all its historic substance. Is Christianity not purely Semitic at the core? Is it not based upon the Semitic conception of the relation between man and his Creator? The great efforts to liberalize and rationalize the Church which the last century witnessed, up to Professor Harnack's recent attempt to sum up "Das Wesen des Christenthums,"--what are all these but endeavors to free it from foreign accretions and envelopments and to bring its Semitic character into greater prominence? It is the only Asiatic conception of religion that has subdued Europe and America, and that still holds undisputed sway over all its diverse nationalities. The very name which symbolizes to them all that is noblest, purest, and most blessed, points to that source as unfailingly as the needle of the compass to the poles. Harnack claims that Christianity is not one religion amongst others, but _The Religion_, the only one fulfilling all the conditions of its highest ideal. The Being in whom that fulness of light was revealed,--was he not a Semite of the Semites? Did he ever deny his origin? Christianity means _Messianity_, and the whole idea of a Mashiach,--the anointed, namely, anointed ruler,--is most intensely national and, therefore, intensely Semitic,--from which indisputable fact it follows that the loftiest conception of religion came to the world from that source. Thence came the Bible,--the book of the world which has been translated into every living tongue and dialect, and to the elucidation of which hosts of scholars still devote their lives. Painting, sculpture, music, poetry, have attempted their highest flights under its inspiration. From countless pulpits its moral and religious truths are expounded, week after week, and on every great occasion of national significance,--in whatever part of Christendom it may occur,--the Songs of Zion are awakened as the fittest expressions of the prevailing sentiment. The Psalter is the most wonderful of existing books,--at home alike in the palace of the king and the cottage of the peasant, the inexhaustible theme of our masters of music. Noeldeke, Protestant professor at the University of Strasburg, one of the great lights of Semitic scholarship, declares that "by the side of the Psalms all other religious hymns appear as pale imitations merely." On that field were gathered the sheaves which a master hand has wound together into the One Universal Prayer, in which all Churches join with one accord. And the Universal Day of Rest,--that one sure blessing of the laboring man,--whence did it come? What other legislator had the divine audacity to make its observance one of the foundation laws of his constitution, and to give it precedence, even over all moral enactments?