GOD AND NATURE 167 



them the form and likeness of such ideal as they 

 were capable of. 



At first man deifies and worships various objects 

 of visible material nature. The first god was prob- 

 ably the sun. Nearly all early races have been 

 sun worshipers. The splendor, the power, the 

 bounty of the sun, is the most obvious of all the 

 facts of nature. Later, as man developed and his 

 mind opened, he made himself gods out of invisible 

 nature. He projected his own ideal into the universe 

 and worshiped that. 



Undoubtedly the most skillful artists in this 

 field, as in so many others, were the Greeks ; their 

 gods were the most beautiful and interesting of all. 

 Apollo stands as a type of grace and power to all 

 succeeding races. Then their lesser divinities, — 

 how charming, how interesting they all are, the works 

 of master hands. 



The old Hebrews were much less as artists, but 

 much greater as prophets ; hence Jehovah, the God 

 of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the most awful, the 

 most imposing, and the most imminent of all the 

 gods. How crude, how terrible, how jealous, — a 

 magnified and heaven-filling despot and king. With 

 a gentle and loving alter ego or deputy, who stands 

 between his stern and awful majesty and guilty and 

 trembling man, namely, Jesus Christ, he is still 

 the God of the most enlightened of the human race. 

 With what power and solemnity he figures in the 

 old Bible ; how he filled and shook the hearts of 

 the old bards and prophets ! Open the Scriptures 



