strength and courage, and fill their mouths with wisdom and
eloquence. They manifest their presence by signs and wonders, by visions
and dreams, by auguries and prophetic voices. But more frequently than
all, they are seen in the ordinary phenomena of nature, the sunshine and
storm, the winds and tempests, the hail and rain. The natural is, in
fact, the supernatural, and all the changes of nature are the movement
and action of the Divine. The feeling of dependence is immediate and
universal, and worship is the natural and spontaneous act of man.

But the period of reflection is inevitable. Man turns his inquiring gaze
towards nature and desires, by an imperfect effort of physical
induction, to reach "the first principle and cause of things." Soon he
discovers the prevalence of uniformity in nature, the actions of
physical properties and agencies, and he catches some glimpses of the
reign of universal law. The natural tendency of this discovery is
obvious in the weakening of his sense of dependence on the immediate
agency of God. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as their fields were
regularly irrigated by the waters of the Nile, they were less dependent
on God than the Greeks, whose lands were watered by rains, and who must
perish if Jupiter did not send them showers.[927] As man advances in the
field of mere physical inquiry, God recedes; from the region of
explained phenomena, he retires into the region of unexplained
phenomena--the border-land of mystery. The gods are driven from the
woods and streams, the winds and waves. Neptune does not absolutely
control the seas, nor AEolus the winds. The Divine becomes, no more a
physical arche--a nature-power, but a Supreme Mind, an ineffable Spirit,
an invisible God, the Supreme Essence of Essences, the Supreme Idea of
Ideas (eidos auto kath auto) apprehended by human reason alone, but
having an independent, eternal, substantial, personal being. Through the
instrumentality of Platonism, the idea of God becomes clearer and purer.
Man had learned that communion with the Divinity was something more than
an apotheosis of humanity, or a pantheistic absorption. He caught
glimpses of a higher and holier union. He had surrendered the ideal of a
national communion with God, and of personal protection through a
federal religion, and now was thrown back upon himself to find some
channel of personal approach to God. But alas! he could not find it. A
God so vastly elevated beyond human co