BOOKS.
MR. SAYOE'S HIBBERT LECTURES.* THE Hibbert Lectures for 1887 have many features of great interest. In some respects they form a contrast to former lectures on this foundation. Many of these simply give us, in a handy and popular form, results which the authors had already given to the world in more elaborate works. Mr. Sayce's work appears for the first time, and may be said to represent the highest level of scientific research on this great and important topic. It is the most elaborate and the most thorough of all the Hibbert Lectures. We do not mean, how- ever, to institute any comparison between the present and former Hibbert Lectures. Our desire is to point out at the outset that the present course indicates a new departure, and gives rise to the hope that the Hibbert Lectures may become an important form of the endowment of research, and may not be need only to summarise the results of work already done, but an encouragement to younger men for the doing of work.
Mr. Sayce does not leave his readers in ignorance of the difficulties of the task he has undertaken
"I may as well confess at the outset," he says, "that had I known all the difficulties I was about to meet with, I should never have had the courage to face them. It was not until I was committed beyond the power of withdrawal that I began fully to realise how great they were. Unlike those who have addressed you before in this place, I have had to work upon materials at once deficient and fragmentary. Mine has not been the pleasant task of marshalling vrell.aseertained facts in order, or of selecting and arranging masses of material, the very abundance of which has alone caused embarrassment. On the contrary, I have had to make moot of my bricks without straw. Here and there, indeed, parts of the subject have been lighted up in a way that left little to be desired, but elsewhere I have had to struggle on in thick darkness, or at moat in dim twilight. I have felt as in a forest where the moon shone at times through open spaces in the thick foliage, but served only to make the surrounding gloom still more apparent, and where I had to search in vain for a clue that would lead me from one interval of light to another." (p. 2.)
As full of interest as this description of the difficulties which beset his path, is the modest claim he Bets up on behalf of his finished work
have undertaken to treat of Babylonian religion only, not of Semitic religion in general. For such a task there are others far more competent than myself ; great Arabia or Syriac or Hebrew scholars, who have devoted their lives to the study of one or more of these better-known Semitic tongues. My own studies have of late years lain more and more in the ever.widening circle of Assyrian research; here there is enough, and more than enough, to fill the whole time and absorb the whole energies of the worker; and be mast be content to confine himself to his own subject, and by honest labour therein to accumulate the facts which others more fortunate than he may hereafter combine and utilise. This is the day of specialists ; the increased application of the scientific; method and the rapid pro- grew of discovery have made it difficult to do more than note and pat together the facts which are constantly crowding one upon the other in a special branch of research. The time may come again— nay, will come again—when once more the ever-flowing stream of discovery will be checked, and famous scholars and thinkers will rise to reap the harvest we have sown. Meanwhile I claim only to be one of the humble labourers of oar own busy age, who have done my best to set before you the facts and theories we may glean from the broken sherds of Nineveh, so far as they bear upon the religion of • Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated by the Religion of the Aneient Babylonians. By A. H. &eye°. The "Hibbert Lectures." 1887. Leaden; Williams and Nergate. the ancient Babylonians. It is for others, whose studies have taken a wider range, to make use of the materials I have endeavoured to collect, and to discover in them, if they can, guides and beacons towards a purer form of faith than that which can be found in the official creeds of the modern world." (pp. 411.12.) The first impression made on the reader of these Lectures is the greatness of the field that lies open to scientific research, and the magnitude of the work yet to be done. As we read, the history of the past broadens and lengthens to our view. The world has had a longer and a greater history than our fathers dreamed of. Until very recently, it was the accepted opinion that the history of Babylon began " at the earliest in the third millennium before our era." The theory seemed so neat and compact, that it was almost a pity to see it disturbed. But loyalty to facts is the supreme scientific law, and the facts prove that the chronology accepted from classical tradition must be greatly enlarged. Not only so; but they also reveal to us an ancient people to whom all subsequent culture has been most deeply indebted. It may be accepted as a true and real gain to knowledge, proven both from the statement of Nabonidos, and also from annalistic tablets, that Sargon I. lived about 3750 B.C. The vistas of a vast antiquity thus laid open to our view, have been made in a measure clear and definite by the labours of Mr. Sayce. He has succeeded in making intelligible the con- ditions of life and modes of thought of the people who lived then.
Through the culture and religion of Babylon, he leads us back to a culture and religion the existence of which was unsuspected a few years ago. There is reason to believe that the Accadian- Sumerian culture is the oldest of which we have at present any knowledge. It is also of unequalled significance in the history of the world. Already traces have been found of the influence of Accadian culture not only on the Semites of Babylon, but through them on the Israelites and Phcenicians, and once again through the latter on the civilisation of Greece. We look to the labours of specialists like Mr. Sayce for additional light, and we expect that we shall soon obtain more knowledge of the Accadian people, with whom civilisation may be said to have begun.
A competent criticism of the work of Mr. Sayce can only come from the pen of one who has special knowledge. For ourselves, we have come to his book to learn, and we have learned much. Our knowledge of the subject was derived largely from Mr. Sayee himself, from the lectures of Mr. Boscawen, and from such recent works as the Lehrbuch der Iteligionsgeschichte, by De La Saussaye, and from some other sources; and for fullness of in- formation and richness of detail, the Hibbert Lecture has no com- petitor. Let us take the chapters on " Bel-Merodach of Baby- lon," or on "The Gods of Babylonia," and we shall find all that is at present known set forth with great lucidity. The parts which will excite most general interest are those where he draws a comparison between the religions of Babylonia and Israel. For instance
Assur differs from the Babylonian gods, not only in the less narrowly local character that belongs to him, but also in his solitary nature. He is ' King of all Gods' in a sense in which none of the deities of Babylon were. He is like the King of Assyria himself, brooking no rival, allowing neither wife nor son to share in the honours which he claims for himself alone. He is essentially a jealous God, and as such sends forth his Assyrian adorers to destroy hie unbelieving foes. Wifeless, childless, he is mightier than the Babylonian Baalim ; less kindly, perhaps, less near to his worshippers than they were, but more awe-inspiring and more powerful. We can, in fact, trace in him all the lineaments upon which, under other con- ditions, there might have been built up as pure a faith as that of the God of Israel." (pp. 127.9.) Passages of the same cast as the preceding occur here and there in the volume, and suggest a most interesting and important question ; and the question is,—How and why was the faith in the God of Israel so pure ? If Babylon came so near to a true idea of God, why did it stop short ? The answer cannot be found in the character of the Semites of Babylon on the one hand, or in the character of Israel on the other. For they were very like each other. We do not seek to discuss the question here, but it is one which constantly occurs in the study of comparative religion, and demands an answer.
Among the many instructive things which might be noticed, we shall select one or two, and the first point is the statement made by Mr. Sayre that the pre-Semitic deities were creators, and the Semitic deities fathers. "This conception of a creating deity is one of the distinguishing features of early Babylonian religion. Mankind are not descended from a particular divinity, as they are in other theologies ; they are created by him. The hymn to Ea tells us that the god of Eridu was the creator of the black-headed race,—that is to say, the old non-Semitic population whose primary centre and starting-point was in Eridn itself. It was as creators that the Accadian Gods were distinguished from the hosts of spirits of whom I shall have to speak in another lecture." This statement is one of far- reaching consequence for religion and theology. The facts on which it is based unquestionably prove its truth. We may inquire what light it casts on the religion of Israel. For here are two religions in existence long before the time of Abraham, of which the distinguishing features are the Creator-God and the Father-God, and in the midst of them, and under their influence, Abraham grew up. Bat the religion of Israel is one which combines both conceptions. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and it is equally explicit in the proclamation of the fatherhood of God. No doubt we shall soon be able to trace the connection more closely.
A second thing we shall point out, because it is important in itself, and specially important in its bearing on the theory of religion set forth by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Sayce says :—
" I can find no traces of ancestor-worship in the early literature of Chaldma which has survived to us. Whatever views the Chalthean may have entertained about the ghost world, they were vague and shadowy ; it was a subterranean region, inhabited for the most part by spirits who were not the spirits of the dead, but of the objects of Nature. They were typified by the spirits of earth, and were all the subjects of Mul.lil." (p. 358.)
We need not point out bow fatal this fact is to the elaborate theory of Mr. Spencer.
The only critical observation we have to make is the following. We have noticed a few instances where Mr. Sayce passes beyond the facts, and ekes them out by considerations drawn from the science of religion. This is the case more particularly in his remarks on Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism. Our know- ledge on these topics, and the relations of the one to the other, and their order of development, is as yet too insecure to be made the basis of further inference. Though much has been written on this subject, it must be regarded as still sub judice, and we cannot help regarding the procedure of Mr. Sayce in this relation as a weakness, even if it is the only weakness in his valuable work.
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