Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

16 THE GODS OF THE NATIONSd people with consternation; special supplicatwere ordered to appease the causers of them.12These are the external manifestations of polytheismwhich struck every eye, and affected themind by their constant recurrence. But if wego beneath the surface and examine the root, weshall find an universal sense in the minds of allmen in that day of unseen power overthe material operations of nature. It was toostrong as well as too general and invariable to becalled an opinion, and it so acted on the nervesand feelings of men that I term it not so mucha logical conviction * as a sense of the close contactbetween man and nature, or rather an unseenpower behind the veil of nature and workingthrough it. Various as the forms of idolatry weregyptian, Asiatic, Libyan, Greek, or Roman;or, again, Iberian, Gallic, German, - all teemedwith this sense. To the adherents of these religions,one and all, the world was very far frombeing a mere system of nature governed by generallaws ;13 it may rather be said that this waswhat it was not. They looked 11ture in all its forms as an expression of thepine will, and therefore the unusual productionsare became to them intimations respectingthat will. And having lost the guidance of a fixedm various places in Heidenthum midJudenthum, pp. 531, 540, 550, &c.Champagny, Les Antoninsy liv. v. c. 3.