Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

384 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND1_ goddesses,^^^^^ j i " such as we have them exhibited in theHomeric and Hesiodic poems, the chief, perhapsthe only, and the yet unwritten literature of thatday, beings with a personal character and will,who were supposed to divide the government ofthe world between them, with a more or less recognisedsovereignty of one chief, arose men whoset themselves by the light of reason to thinksteadily and continuously how that world in whichthey were living had become what it was. Sucha movement of mind indicated in itself dissatis-faction with the existing o religion, O ." wherein thegods were considered the causes of things, andtheir wills the rulers of them, though in the backgroundeven here loomed the idea of fate, therepresentative, as it were, of brute matter, fromwhich the Greek mind could never disengage itself.Yet we do not find that these philosophersset themselves openly to attack the existing religion; rather leaving it in possession, and themselvesusually complying with its forms, they pursuedtheir own train of thought, as it were by itsside, not choosing to look whither it would leadthem.Such very much appears the position of inquirersin the first period of Greek philosophy,which is generally made to extend from its riseunder Thales to the time of the Sophists and Socrates.Their thoughts were mainly occupied withthe appearances of the physical world: they specu-