“Zeus, the mighty thunderer, is first, Zeus is last,
    Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle of all things. 
    From Zeus were all things produced.  He is both man and woman;
    Zeus is the depth of the earth, and the height of the starry heavens;
    He is the breath of all things, the force of untamed fire;
    The bottom of the sea; sun, moon, and stars;
    Origin of all; king of all;
    One Power, one God, one great Ruler.”

And another says, still more plainly:—­

    “There is one royal body, in which all things are enclosed,
    Fire and Water, Earth, Ether, Night and Day,
    And Counsel, the first producer, and delightful Love,
    For all these are contained in the great body of Zeus.”

Sec. 9.  Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

One of the greatest events in the history of man, as well as one of the most picturesque situations, was when Paul stood on the Areopagus at Athens, carrying Christianity into Europe, offering a Semitic religion to an Aryan race, the culmination of monotheism to one of the most elaborate and magnificent polytheisms of the world.  A strange and marvellous scene!  From the place where he stood he saw all the grandest works of human art,—­the Acropolis rose before him, a lofty precipitous rock, seeming like a stone pedestal erected by nature as an appropriate platform for the perfect marble temples with which man should adorn it.  On this noble base rose the Parthenon, temple of Minerva; and the temple of Neptune, with its sacred fountain.  The olive-tree of Pallas-Athene was there, and her colossal statue.  On the plain below were the temples of Theseus and Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others.  He stood where Socrates had stood four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of justice known among men was wont to assemble.  There he made the memorable discourse, a few fragments only of which have come to us in the Book of Acts, but a sketch significant of his argument.  He did not begin, as in our translation, by insulting the religion of the Greeks, and calling it a superstition; but by praising them for their reverence and piety.  Paul respected all manifestations of awe and love toward those mysteries and glories of the universe, in which the invisible things of God have been clearly seen from the foundation of the world.  Then he mentions his finding the altar to the unknown God, mentioned also by Pausanias and other Greek writers, one of whom, Diogenes Laertius, says that in a time of plague, not knowing to what god to appeal, they let loose a number of black and white sheep, and whereever any one laid down they erected an altar to an unknown god, and offered sacrifices thereon.  Then he announced as his central and main theme the Most High God, maker of heaven and