and powerful, and wrote poems which will live till the world's end,
which you must read for yourselves some day, in English at least,
if not in Greek. And they learnt to carve statues, and build
temples, which are still among the wonders of the world; and many
another wondrous thing God taught them, for which we are the wiser
this day.

For you must not fancy, children, that because these old Greeks
were heathens, therefore God did not care for them, and taught them
nothing.

The Bible tells us that it was not so, but that God's mercy is over
all His works, and that He understands the hearts of all people,
and fashions all their works. And St. Paul told these old Greeks
in after times, when they had grown wicked and fallen low, that
they ought to have known better, because they were God's offspring,
as their own poets had said; and that the good God had put them
where they were, to seek the Lord, and feel after Him, and find
Him, though He was not far from any one of them. And Clement of
Alexandria, a great Father of the Church, who was as wise as he was
good, said that God had sent down Philosophy to the Greeks from
heaven, as He sent down the Gospel to the Jews.

For Jesus Christ, remember, is the Light who lights every man who
comes into the world. And no one can think a right thought, or
feel a right feeling, or understand the real truth of anything in
earth and heaven, unless the good Lord Jesus teaches him by His
Spirit, which gives man understanding.

But these Greeks, as St. Paul told them, forgot what God had taught