he
"interpretations" of Apollo. "To the Delphian Apollo there remains the
greatest, noblest, and most important of legal institutions--the
erection of temples, sacrifices, and other services to the gods,... and
what other services should be gone through with a view to their
_propitiation_. Such things as these, indeed, _we neither know
ourselves, nor in founding the State would we intrust them to others_,
if we be wise;... the god of the country is the natural interpreter to
all men about such matters."[140]

[Footnote 138: "He that hath done the deed, to suffer for it--thus cries
a proverb thrice hallowed by age."--AEschylus, "Choeph," 311.]

[Footnote 139: "Laws," book vi. ch. xv.]

[Footnote 140: "Republic," book iv. ch. v.]

The origin of expiatory sacrifices can not, we think, be explained
except on the principle of a primitive revelation and a positive
appointment of God. They can not be understood except as a
divinely-appointed symbolism, in which there is exhibited a confession
of personal guilt and desert of punishment; an intimation and a hope
that God will be propitious and merciful; and a typical promise and
prophecy of a future Redeemer from sin, who shall "put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself." This sacred rite was instituted in connection
with the _protevangelium_ given to our first parents; it was diffused
among the nations by tradition, and has been kept alive as a general,
and, indeed, almost universal observance, by that deep sense of sin, and
consciousness of guilt, and personal urgency of the need of a
reconciliation, which are so clearly displayed in Grecian mythology.

The legitimate inference we find ourselves entitled to draw from the
words of Paul, when fairly interpreted in the light of the past
religious history of the world, is, that the Athenians were a religious
people; that is, _they were, however unknowing, believers in and
worshippers of the One Supreme God_.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS: ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND SYMBOLICAL ASPECTS.

"That there is one Supreme Deity, both philosophers and poets, and even
the vulgar worshippers of the gods themselves frequently acknowledge;
which because the assertors of gods well understood, they affirm these
gods of theirs to preside over the several parts of the world, yet so
that there is only one chief governor. Whence it follows, that all their
other gods can be no other than ministers and officers which one
greates