s of that one
Numen,--divine force and power which runs through all the world,
multiformly displaying itself._"[152] "Their various deities were but
different names, different conceptions, of that Incomprehensible Being
which no _thought_ can reach, and no _language_ express."[153] Having
given to these several manifestations of the Divinity personal names,
they now sought to represent them to the eye of sense by _visible
forms_, as the symbols or images of the perfections of the unseen, the
incomprehensible, the unknown God. And as the Greeks regarded man as the
first and noblest among the phenomena of nature, they selected the human
form as the highest sensible manifestation of God, the purest symbol of
the Divinity. Grecian polytheism was thus a species of _mythical
anthropomorphism_.

[Footnote 150: The original constitution of man is such that he "seeks
after" God Acts xvii. 27. "All men yearn after the gods" (Homer,
"Odyss." iii. 48).]

[Footnote 151: "Heathenism springs directly from this, that the mind
lays undue stress upon the bare letter in the book of creation; that it
separates and individualizes its objects as far as possible; that it
places the sense of the individual part, in opposition to the sense of
the whole,--to the _analogia fidei_ or _spiritus_ which alone gives
unity to the book of nature, while it dilutes and renders as transitory
as possible the sense of the universal in the whole.... And as it laid
great stress upon the letter in the book of nature, it fell into
polytheism. The particular symbol of the divine, or of the Godhead,
became a myth of some special deity."--Lange's "Bible-work," Genesis, p.
23.]

[Footnote 152: Cudworth, "Intellect. System," vol. i. p. 308.]

[Footnote 153: Max Mueller, "Science of Language," p. 431.]

A philosophy of Grecian mythology, such as we have outlined in the
preceding paragraphs, is, in our judgment, perfectly consistent with the
views announced by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He intimates
that the Athenians "thought that the Godhead was _like unto_ (e nai
omoion)--to be imaged or represented by human art--by gold, and silver,
and precious stone graven by art, and device of man;" that is, they
thought the perfections of God could be represented to the eye by an
image, or symbol. The views of Paul are still more articulately
expressed in Romans, i. 23, 25: "They changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into the _similitude of an image_ of co