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 Müller, "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_ (ἐ ναι ὄμοιον)--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 corruptible man,.... and they worshipped and served the thing made, παρά--_rather_ than, or _more_ than the Creator." Here, then, the apostle intimates, first, that the heathen _knew_ God,[154] and that they worshipped God. They worshipped the creature besides or even more than God, but still they also worshipped God. And, secondly, they represented the perfections of God by an image, and under this, as a "_likeness_" or symbol, they indirectly worshipped God. Their religious system was, then, even to the eye of Paul, a _symbolic_ worship--that is, the objects of their devotion were the _ὁμοιώματα_--the similitudes, the likenesses, the images of the perfections of the invisible God. [Footnote 154: Verse 21.]