Excerpt from Semi-Centennial Sermon: Delivered by Rev. C. D. Smith, Before the Holston Conference, M. E. Church, South, at Its Session in Asheville, N. C., October, 1888

Again, the things written aforetime by the ancient Greeks contain much for our learning. Their mythology is full of food for thought. They believed in a super-ruling power. They believed that there was a presiding divinity over everything, and while they did not comprehend the personality and attri butes of the Supreme God, as did Moses and the Hebrew prophets, yet they did not attribute anything to mere chance. They did not have protoplasm or evolution working up man, by some inherent power or process, from a brainless worm into the likeness and image of God. With them nothing transpired without the presence and agency of a deity, and although they had a presiding divinity for each object in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, yet each of these deities was with them a very God. The idea ofa supreme divinity, though vague and fabulous, nevertheless impressed itself upon their architecture-an architecture which remains, in its essential features, unrivaled. Each creation of architectural order and beauty 'in their minds came out from a brain fired with the idea of a God. This conception, in the Grecian mind, of the idea of a supreme divinity lay not only at the foundation of cv ery conception of order and harmony, of grandeur and beauty, of proportion and adaptability, in the mind of a Grecian archi tect, but in the minds'of all others as well. It lent its charms to Grecian sculpture and painting. It was the soul and inspi ration ofgrecian eloquence, and poetry, and music. This sug gests to us a valuable lesson for our learning as public speak ers. Now, by way of contrast, I ask what conceptions of grandeur or beauty could protoplasm have inspired in the mind of a Grecian master in the arts? What additional charms could protoplasm have imparted to the eloquence of Grecian orators? What new and additional sweet chordcould protoplasm have touched in the music of a Gre end 'inflwhat-possible respect could protoplasm or t ha ve*embollished and'beautified Grecian poetry? 1t ly amoment's consideration of the difference between of aesupreme divinity when fixed-in the mind andthe of protoplasm to convince you =whatiit was that made arts thermodels for'the world; what it was that im] Grecian eloquence those charms which all-ages have ored to copy. It was the divinity which operatednp Nor were their gods distant deitiesfi-mere idlers i known realms. They were ever present to their m their action was constant and immediate, and it was stant contact wh ch gave them the inspiration. And this mythology was made up of fabulous and imagin yet the ever present contact of these deities with the l the influence it had upon Grecian worship operated in as though it were supreme. In this they may well, shame who so often isolate our God and put Him at a; tance during our devotions, and thereby deprive our the inspiration resulting from immediate contact. Things were written aforetime for our learning, and tl us that in whatever age men may have lived, and may have been their nationality or their civilizati conception of order. Harmony, grandeur, sublimity, be symmetry have ever been associated, in some way, it man mindwith the idea of a supreme God-an almi, ative power and skill.

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