Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

POWER OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY 339and there was a customary worship from which latterconduct had been detached. And the most strikingsign and proof of this detachment is the fact that thepriest was nowhere approached as the adviser, exhorter,and trainer in the religious life. This fact in its deepsignificance is beyond question. Its explanation is tobe found in the division of the divine unity which hadbroken down and laid waste the union of belief andconduct with worship. Mythology, which is themirror of popular belief, is itself the result of false,that is, polytheistic worship. As long as men believein one only God, no mythology is possible, as there isnone among Jews, or Christians, or Mahometans. Butthe division of the divine unity introduced gods ofthree sorts, deified men, deified spirits, deified powersof nature, and mythology is the endless play of humanfancy, differing according to the mental quality ofvarious peoples in describing the various attributes andactions of these various deities. Such wild fictions,mixed up indeed with religion, and containing somedisguised and disfigured religious truth, could not bereduced to the severe and orderly arrangement ofreligious instruction, could not form a consistent codeof human duty, any more than a theory of correctbelief. So the priest of the false god ceased to teachhis people religious truth and a rule of life. Hebecame a mere sacrificant; he was no longer an in-structor; and specially he ceased to teach what thesacrifice which he outwardly performed carried in itsinward meaning. And in his own life there hadequally ceased to be a connection between upright conductand the priestly office.Thus in all this period the strange result is seenthat in the various trials of life, in bereavement,