153 
Well might the more polished Thebans, therefore, protest against 
such additions, by refusing to pay taxes for their support, espe- 
cially in view of such noble relics of the earlier empire as those 
presented in Memphis and its neighbourhood, where the temples 
often contained statues which prompted worshippers to silence 
and stillness, and taught the secret and incomprehensible nature 
of the Supreme God ; and on which inscriptions were read like 
that in the temple of Isis at Sais— ■ -“ I am all that hath been, 
is, and shall be; and no man hath uncovered my veil,”* — re- 
minding those who drew near to Him that there was a unity 
and eternity in the Supreme Being which no mortal man could 
fathom. 
21. Egypt lent her best thoughts to the early Greeks, such 
as Thales, Pythagoras, and others. We may therefore expect 
to read the same refined conceptions of Deity in the fragment- 
ary remains of the philosophers which have been handed down 
to us. And so we do. Thales, who lived in the 5th century 
b.c., held a sort of Pantheistic-Monotheism, declaring, on the 
one hand, “ All things are full of God; and on the other, “God 
is the oldest of all things because He is unmade.”! Pythagoras 
spoke more plainly — “ God is One, and All-in- All ; the Light 
of all power ; the Beginning of all things ; the Father, Life, 
Mind, and Motion of the universe.” His whole school held 
Mind to be the first great cause. The Eleatic school, which 
followed, spoke still more distinctly. Xenophanes, the founder 
of this school, declared that “ God was an Infinite Being, un- 
like man in shape and thought, being all sight, and ear, and 
intelligence.”! Passing onward, we come to Plato, whose 
language was more unmistakably monotheistic. He speaks of 
“the Architect of the world ” — “the Sovereign Mind which 
orders all things ” — “ the Greatest of the Gods ” — “ He that 
produceth all other things, and even Himself;” thus bringing 
out the doctrine of a Supreme Deity who was self-existent. 
22. It will, of course, be contended that all these splendid 
conceptions of Deity were the result of an intellectual develop- 
ment following those lower forms of Polytheism which appear 
in the Pantheisms of Homer and Hesiod. In some respects, 
no doubt, they were the growth of ideal truth. But if this 
observation be intended to assert that there was no Mono- 
theistic faith underlying the earlier Polytheism of the nation, 
. * well-known inscription has been preserved for us by Plutarch, 
m his Be Is. et Osir. 
f Preserved in Laertius, lib. i. 
t See Hunt’s Essay on Pantheism , p. 61 . 
