a mournful
grandeur to the whole.

Whilst the pagan polytheistic worship is, under one aspect, to be
regarded as a departure from God, inasmuch as it takes away the honor
due to God alone, and transfers it to the creature; still, under another
aspect, we can not fail to recognize in it the effort of the human mind
to fill up the chasm that seemed, to the undisciplined mind, to separate
God and man--and to bridge the gulf between the visible and the
invisible, the finite and the infinite. It was unquestionably an attempt
to bring God nearer to the sense and comprehension of man. It had its
origin in that instinctive yearning after the supernatural, the Divine,
which dwells in all human hearts, and which has revealed itself in all
philosophies, mysticisms, and religions.[150] This longing was
stimulated by the contemplation of the living beauty and grandeur of the
visible universe, which, to the lively fancy and deep feeling of the
Greeks, seemed as the living vesture of the Infinite Mind,--the temple
of the eternal Deity. In this visible universe the Divinity was partly
revealed, and partly concealed. The unity of the all-pervading
Intelligence was veiled beneath an apparent diversity of power, and a
manifoldness of operations. They caught some glimpses of this universal
presence in nature, but were more immediately and vividly impressed by
the several manifestations of the divine perfections and divine
operations, as so many separate rays of the Divinity, or so many
subordinate agents and functionaries employed to execute the will and
carry out the purposes of the Supreme Mind.[151] That unseen,
incomprehensible Power and Presence was perceived in the sublimity of
the deep blue sky, the energy of the vitalizing sun, the surging of the
sea, the rushing wind, the roaring thunder, the ripening corn, and the
clustering vine. To these separate manifestations of the Deity they gave
_personal names_, as Jupiter to the heavens, Juno to the air, Neptune to
the sea, Ceres to the corn, and Bacchus to the vine. These personals
denoted, not the things themselves, but the invisible, divine powers
supposed to preside over those several departments of nature. By a kind
of prosopopoeia "they spake of the things in nature, and parts of the
world, as persons--and consequently as so many gods and goddesses--yet
so as the intelligent might easily understand their meaning, _that these
were in reality nothing else but so many names and notion