There was one God. The gods of the old mythology were passing away, like a splendid pageantry of clouds moving across the horizon to be absorbed in the clear and infinite heaven. “But though God is one,” it was said,[311] “He has many names, deriving a name from each of the spheres of His government.... He is called the Son of Kronos, that is of Time, because He continues from eternity to eternity; and Lightning-God, and Thunder-God, and Rain-God, from the lightnings and thunders and rains; and Fruit-God, from the fruits (which he sends); and City-God, from the cities (which he protects); and the God of births, and homesteads, and kinsmen, and families, of companions, and friends, and armies.... God, in short, of heaven and earth, named after all forms of nature and events as being Himself the cause of all.” “There are not different gods among different peoples,” says Plutarch,[312] “nor foreign gods and Greek gods, nor gods of the south and gods of the north; but just as sun and moon and sky and earth and sea are common to all mankind, but have different names among different races, so, though there be one Reason who orders these things and one Providence who administers them ... there are different honours and appellations among different races; and men use consecrated symbols, some of them obscure and some more clear, so leading their thoughts on the path to the Divine: but it is not without risk; for some men, wholly missing their foothold, have slipped into superstition, and others, avoiding the slough of superstition, have in their turn fallen over the precipice of atheism.” In the conception of God as it thus uncoiled itself in Greek history, three strands of thought are constantly intertwined—the thought of a Creator, the thought of a Moral Governor, and the thought of a Supreme or Absolute Being. It is desirable to trace the history of each of these thoughts, as far as possible, separately, and to consider their separate effects upon the development of Christian theology. The present Lecture will deal mainly with the first: the two following Lectures with the other two. * * * * *