nd sentiments which underlie the higher life of our time may
be largely traced back to two roots, the one Greek-Roman, the other
Hebrew.

Each of these two races had originally a mythology made up partly of the
personification and worship of the powers of nature, and partly of the
deification of human traits or individual heroes.

The higher mind of the Greeks and Romans, in which the distinctive notes
were clear intelligence, love of beauty, and practical force, gradually
broke away altogether from the popular mythology, and sought to find in
reason an explanation of the universe and a sufficient rule of life.

The Greek-Roman mythology made only an indirect and slight contribution
to modern religion. But the ethical philosophy and the higher poetry of
the two peoples belong not only to our immediate lineage but to our
present possessions.

A humanity common with our own brings us into closest sympathy with
certain great personalities of this antique world. Differences of time,
race, civilization, are powerless to prevent our intimate friendship and
reverence for Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius,
Epictetus.

Homer shows the opening of eyes and heart to this whole wonderful world
of nature and of man.

Sophocles sees human life in its depth of suffering and height of
achievement. He views mingled spectacle with profound reverence, sure
that through it all is working some divine power. Goodness is dear to
the gods, wickedness is abhorrent to them. But the good man is often
unhappy,--from strange inheritance of curse, or from complication of
events which no wisdom can baffle. Yet from the discipline of suffering
emerges the noblest character, and over the grave itself play gleams of
hope, faint but celestial.

In Socrates, we see the man who having in himself attained a solid and
noble goodness, addresses all his powers to finding a clear road by which
all men may be led into goodness. He first propounds in clearness the
most important question of humanity,--how shall man by reason and by will
become master of life?

Plato takes up the question after him, and follows it with an intellect
unequaled in its imaginative flight. Plato lighted the fire which has
burned high in the enthusiasts of the spirit,--the mystics, the dreamers,
the idealists.

Aristotle confined himself to the homelier province where demonstration
is possible, and laid the foundation of logic and of natural sci