Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CimiST API'KAKKD.35First, as to its victims. Scarcely a writer,whether poet, historian, philosopher, or biographer,can be found amono; O the heathens of Greece andRome who does not attest facts belonging toone or more of these four classes which surpasshuman power, and suggest an invisible spiritualagency. The poet who writes expressly to denysuch an agency speaks of the whole world asbowed beneath the fear of it; another poet,35 referringtacitly to this very passage, felicitates the mannot who has a pure conscience, but who throughknowledge of natural things has trampled thesefears under his feet. Nor is such a belief confinedto the vulgar; but scarcely a man of eminence,a soldier, or a statesman can be cited whodoes not in his life and actions acknowledge it,shrink from it, or cower beneath it. It is toopowerful for Alexander or even Julius to escape;and the philosophers who affect to deny it in theirsystems exhibit it in their conduct. They haveall the conviction of an evil power beyond andabove nature, but taking hold of natural forms,and ever lying in wait to burst forth from themupon human life. The Greek name for superstitionis fear of the demons; and what S. Paul s;dd of the35 " Humana ante oculos fcede quam vita jaceretIn terris, oppressa gravi sub rcligione," &c. Lucret. i. C3." Felix qui potuit re rum. cognoscere causas,Atquo metus onmes ct incxorabile fatumSubjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari."Vir#. (Ifo. ii. 491.