Preface. 3
On the one hand, they testify to the continuity of religious
thought. God's light lighteth every man that cometh into the
world, and the religions of Egypt and Babylonia illustrate the
words of the evangelist. They form, as it were, the background
and preparation for Judaism and Christianity; Christianity is the
fulfilment, not of the Law only, but of all that was truest and
best in the religions of the ancient world. In it the beliefs and
aspirations of Egypt and Babylonia have found their explanation
and fulfilment. But, on the other hand, between Judaism and
the coarsely polytheistic religion of Babylonia, as also between
Christianity and the old Egyptian faith,—in spite of its high
morality and spiritual insight,—there lies an impassable gulf.
And for the existence of this gulf I can find only one explanation,
unfashionable and antiquated though it be. In the language of a
former generation, it marks the dividing-line between revelation
and unrevealed religion. It is like that“something,”hard to
define, yet impossible to deny, which separates man from the
ape, even though on the physiological side the ape may be the
ancestor of the man.
A. H. Sayce.
October 1902.
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