The last contribution of western Asia to the betterment of the world was Christianity. It was not made until after Greece had reached the prime of her civilization and passed beyond it; and some may consider it a sacrilege to call it an invention. It was an inspiration from On High. But dare anyone assert that the wonderful conceptions that have come unbidden to the minds of the great inventors were not, in their degree, also inspirations from On High? Whence did they come? That they came there can be no doubt. Whence did they come? Our religion teaches us that God directs our paths, that He puts good thoughts into our minds. It also teaches us that He inspired the men who wrote the Bible. In the ordinary meaning of the word "inspired," Some One inspired every noble and novel and beneficent achievement that was ever made. Who? * * * * * Without insisting tediously on the meaning of the word invention, one may point out that the word is used continually to mean a mental act by which something heretofore non-existent is created. The expertest of all word users, in any language, cried: "Oh, for a muse that would ascend the highest heaven of invention"; expressing almost exactly what the present author is trying to express, and indicating invention as the highest effort of the mind. In this sense, may I reverently claim the Christian Religion as an invention, one of the greatest inventions ever made? CHAPTER III INVENTION IN GREECE Our brief survey has thus far carried us over the lands of Egypt, China and western Asia; lands so far removed from us in distance, and inhabited by people so far removed from us in time and character, that they seem to belong almost to another world. But we now are coming to a country which, though its history goes back many centuries before the Christian era, was a country of Europe and inhabited by a people who seem near. The Greeks who overran what we now call Greece, probably about 1500 B. C., took possession of a civilization exceedingly high, which the inhabitants of the mainland and the Ægean Islands had received from the East, through the Phoenicians, who brought it in their ships. This civilization the Ægean islanders, especially the Cretans, had developed and improved, particularly in creations of beauty and works of art. The Greeks created a still higher civilization, and transmitted it to us. The influence of Greek civilization we see on every hand:--in our language, in our daily life, and especially in our ideas of art, literature and philosophy.