Whenever, therefore, we find the name of heaven thus used to designate also the Deity, we must bear in mind that those by whom it was originally employed were simply transferring that name from an object visible to the eye of sense to another object perceived by the eye of reason. They who at first called God "_Heaven_" had some conception within them they wished to name--the growing image of a God, and they fixed upon the vastest, grandest, purest object in nature, the deep blue concave of heaven, overshadowing all, and embracing all, as the symbol of the Deity. Those who at a later period called heaven "_God_" had forgotten that they were predicating of heaven something more which was vastly higher than the heaven.[181] [Footnote 181: See "Science of Language," p. 457.] Notwithstanding, then, that the instinctive, native faith of humanity in the existence of one supreme God was overlaid and almost buried beneath the rank and luxuriant vegetation of Grecian mythology, we can still catch glimpses here and there of the solid trunk of native faith, around which this parasitic growth of fancy is entwined. Above all the phantasmata of gods and goddesses who descended to the plains of Troy, and mingled in the din and strife of battle, we can recognize an overshadowing, all-embracing Power and Providence that dwells on high, which never descends into the battle-field, and is never seen by mortal eyes--_the Universal King and Father,--the "God of gods_." Besides the direct evidence, which is furnished by the poets and mythologists, of the presence of this universal faith in "_the heavenly Father_," there is also a large amount of collateral testimony that this idea of one Supreme God was generally entertained by the Greek pagans, whether learned or unlearned.[182] Dio Chrysostomus says that "all the poets call the first and greatest God the Father, universally, of all rational kind, as also the King thereof. Agreeably with which doctrine of the poets do mankind erect altars to Jupiter-King (Διὸς βασιλέως) and hesitate not to call him Father in their devotions" (Orat. xxxvi.). And Maximus Tyrius declares that both the learned and the unlearned throughout the pagan world universally agree in this; that there is one Supreme God, the Father of gods and men. "If," says he, "there were a meeting called of all the several trades and professions,... and all were required to declare their sense concerning God, do you think that the painter would say one thing, the sculptor another, the poet another, and the philosopher another? No; nor the Scythian neither, nor the Greek, nor the hyperborean. In regard to other things, we find men speaking discordantly one to another, all men, as it were, differing from all men... Nevertheless, on this subject, you may find universally throughout the world one agreeing law and opinion; _that there is one God, the King and Father of all, and many gods, the sons of God, co-reigners together with God_"(Diss. i. p. 450).