mage of the
infinite, these poured all their fullness on the Athenian mind, and
furnished the most favorable conditions for the development of the
religious sentiments. The people of Athens spent most of their time in
the open air in communion with nature, and in the cheerful and temperate
enjoyment of existence. To recognize the Deity in the living powers of
nature, and especially in man, as the highest sensible manifestation of
the Divine, was the peculiar prerogative of the Grecian mind. And here
in Athens, art also vied with nature to deepen the religious sentiments.
It raised the mind to ideal conceptions of a beauty and a sublimity
which transcended all mere nature-forms, and by images, of supernatural
grandeur and loveliness presented to the Athenians symbolic
representations of the separate attributes and operations of the
invisible God. The plastic art of Greece was designed to express
religious ideas, and was consecrated by religious feeling. Thus the
facts of the case are strikingly in harmony with the words of the
Apostle: "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in
religion," your "reverence for the Deity," your "fear of God."[129] "The
sacred objects" in Athens, and especially "the altar to the Unknown
God," were all regarded by Paul as evidences of their instinctive faith
in the invisible, the supernatural, the divine.

[Footnote 128: Kant, in "Critique of Practical Reason."]

[Footnote 129: See Parkhurst's Lexicon, under _Deisidaimonia_, which
Suidas explains by eulabeia peri to Theion--_reverence for the Divine_,
and Hesychius by Phubutheia--_fear of God_. Also, Josephus, Antiq., book
x. ch. iii, Sec. 2: "Manasseh, after his repentance and reformation, strove
to behave himself (te deisidaimonia chrestheia) in the _most religious
manner_ towards God." Also see A. Clarke on Acts xvii.]

Along with this sentiment of the Divine there is also associated, in all
human minds, an _instinctive yearning_ after the Invisible; not a mere
feeling of curiosity to pierce the mystery of being and of life, but
what Paul designates "a feeling after God," which prompts man to seek
after a deeper knowledge, and a more immediate consciousness. To attain
this deeper knowledge--this more conscious realization of the being and
the presence of God, has been the effort of all philosophy and all
religion in all ages. The Hindoo Yogis proposes to withdraw into his
inmost self, and by a complete suspension of a