Another mode of converse between deity and man was found in the oracle. Widespread was the belief that through certain chosen persons or in certain peculiar spots the gods deigned to communicate with those who sought their aid. Such agencies were peculiarly numerous in the Hellenic world, and the oracle at Delphi acquired supreme importance. As early as the eighth century B.C., in the days of Amos and Isaiah, it is rising into prominence as an authority that may take the leading place in Greek religion. At one time it almost seemed as if it might succeed {183} in co-ordinating the separate and often opposing forces of the City States, and blend them into national unity. If that hope was ever cherished by its guardians, they failed to realise it. The higher minds discerned in it capacities which were never fulfilled. They saw it give counsel to rival powers, promote enterprise, and support plans of colonisation. They knew that it exercised a far-reaching moral authority; it compelled reverence for oaths, and secured respect for the lives of women, suppliants, and slaves; and again and again in true prophetic spirit it subordinated ritual to ethical demands. With the widest outlook over human affairs, Plato proposes to establish the midpoint of religious legislation in Delphi at Apollo's shrine: "He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel of the earth, and he is the interpreter of religion to all mankind." It is the note of universalism: had not Jeremiah proclaimed two centuries before on behalf of Yahweh at Jerusalem: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations"? When the Israelites had renewed their temple in the days of Darius, and the scribes were beginning to busy themselves with the remains of their national literature, Greek writers also interested themselves in the collection of the utterances of the past. About 500 B.C. Onomacritus gathered together the oracles of Musæus. It was the first instance of what became a frequent practice {184} in later days; one of Plato's disciples, Heracleides of Pontus, undertook a similar task; so did Chrysippus the Stoic. A special literature was thus begotten. The circumstances which called for the successive oracles were duly narrated; and had Delphi maintained its early position, here would have lain the nucleus of a Scripture, which might have developed into a permanent record of revelation.