loods of the Hellespont in chains was not more futile
nor more impotent than the attempt of skepticism to repress the
universal tendency to worship, so peculiar and so natural to man in
every age and clime.

[Footnote 109: The indispensable necessity for a religion of some kind
to satisfy the emotional nature of man is tacitly confessed by the
atheist Comte in the publication of his "Catechism of Positive
Religion."]

The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element in the
Athenian mind is further accounted for by their misconception of the
meaning of the word "religion." We are all too much accustomed to regard
religion as a mere system of dogmatic teaching. We use the terms
"Christian religion," "Jewish religion," "Mohammedan religion," as
comprehending simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is
distinguished; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling, and
action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to and our
dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to itself any specific
department of our mental powers and susceptibilities, but it conditions
the entire functions and circle of our spiritual life. It is not simply
a mode of conceiving God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God
in the affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in outward
and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion (_religere_,
respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feelings, and acts
towards God. "It is a reference and a relationship of our finite
consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer and Governor of the
universe." It is such a consciousness of the Divine as shall awaken in
the heart of man the sentiments of reverence, fear, and gratitude
towards God; such a sense of dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and
lead him to perform external acts of worship.

Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowledge, however
correct; and yet it must be preceded and accompanied by some intuitive
cognition of a Supreme Being, and some conception of him as a free moral
personality. But the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the
heart than to the understanding of man--the consciousness of dependence,
the sense of obligation, the feeling of reverence, the instinct to pray,
the appetency to worship--these may all exist and be largely developed
in a human mind even when, as in the case of the Athenians, there is a
very imperfect knowledge of the real char