natural beauty and a love of searching into the wonders of
the earth and of the heavens.

The religion of the Aryan races, in its beginning, was a very
simple and a very noble one. They looked up to the heavens and
saw the bright sun, and the light and beauty and glory of the
day. They saw the day fade into night and the clouds draw
themselves across the sky, and then they saw the dawn and the
light and life of another day. Seeing these things, they felt
that some Power higher than man ordered and guided them; and to
this great Power they gave the name of _Dyaus_, from a root-word
which means "to shine." And when, out of the forces and forms of
Nature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus
became _Dyaus pitar_, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in
far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in
Europe, the _Dyaus pitar_ of the central Asian land became the
Zeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and the
first part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to
_God_. So, as Professor Max Muller tells us, the descendants of
the ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for what is most
exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to
express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can
do but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal
sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as
near as near can be; they can but combine the self-same words
and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father,
in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father, which art
in Heaven.'"

The feeling which the Aryans had towards the Heaven-Father is