[Footnote 124: "The men and women of the Iliad and Odyssey are habitually religious. The language of religion is often on their tongues, as it is ever on the lips of every body in the East at this day. The thought of the gods, and of their providence and government of the world, is a familiar thought. They seem to have an abiding conviction of their _dependence_ on the gods. The results of all actions depend on the will of the gods; _it lies on their knees_ (θεῶν ἐν γούνασι κεἶται, Od. i. 267), is the often repeated and significant expression of their feeling of dependence."--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," p. 165.] 3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions which always accompany the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being. The first emotional element of all religion is _fear_. This is unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a Christian or a heathen stand-point. "The _fear_ of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Associated with, perhaps preceding, all definite ideas of God, there exists in the human mind certain feelings of _awe_, and _reverence_, and _fear_ which arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a _personal, living Power_, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an _overshadowing Presence_ which "compasseth man behind and before, and lays its hand upon him." This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and presence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind: