l unknown what deity was propitious, an
altar was erected _to the unknown God_ on every spot where a sheep had
been sacrificed."[123]

[Footnote 121: Cudworth, vol. i. p. 300.]

[Footnote 122: "Lives of Philosophers," book i., Epimenides.]

[Footnote 123: See Townsend's "Chronological Arrangement of New
Testament," note 19, part xii.; Doddridge's "Exposition;" and Barnes's
"Notes on Acts."]

"The unknown God" was their deliverer from the plague. And the erection
of an altar to him was a confession of their absolute dependence upon
him, of their obligation to worship him, as well as of their need of a
deeper knowledge of him. The gods who were known and named were not able
to deliver them in times of calamity, and they were compelled to look
beyond the existing forms of Grecian mythology for relief. Beyond all
the gods of the Olympus there was "one God over all," the Father of gods
and men, the Creator of all the subordinate local deities, upon whom
even these created gods were dependent, upon whom man was absolutely
dependent, and therefore in times of deepest need, of severest
suffering, of extremest peril, then they cried to the living, supreme,
eternal God.[124]

[Footnote 124: "The men and women of the Iliad and Odyssey are
habitually religious. The language of religion is often on their
tongues, as it is ever on the lips of every body in the East at this
day. The thought of the gods, and of their providence and government of
the world, is a familiar thought. They seem to have an abiding
conviction of their _dependence_ on the gods. The results of all actions
depend on the will of the gods; _it lies on their knees_ (Theon ev
gounasi keitai, Od. i. 267), is the often repeated and significant
expression of their feeling of dependence."--Tyler, "Theology of Greek
Poets," p. 165.]

3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions
which always accompany the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme
Being.

The first emotional element of all religion is _fear_. This is
unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a Christian or
a heathen stand-point. "The _fear_ of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom." Associated with, perhaps preceding, all definite ideas of God,
there exists in the human mind certain feelings of _awe_, and
_reverence_, and _fear_ which arise spontaneously in presence of the
vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the
power and glory of wh