the successive events, and accounting for them by known positive laws, but introducing no special interventions of Jehovah--such a history would have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive, but destitute of all plausibility or title to credence." As it was supposed, that the celestial personages had frequently come down to earth and taken part in human affairs, fought in mortal battles, and fallen in love with mortal women, so it was natural that the poets and romancers should produce narratives of these divine adventures. These narratives appearing probable in themselves, and being calculated to have an edifying influence on the religious conceptions of the people, were received as true, and, of course, no subject could be more attractive than the biography of the divinities. "These myths* or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Jewish mind, constituted, at the same time, the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Jews subsequently diverged, containing as it were the preface and germ of their history, poetry, and theology. * * * They furnished aliment and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sympathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy but anxious presentiments of the vulgar, as to the agency of the gods; moreover they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous, which has in modern times become the province of fiction proper. It is difficult, we may say, it is impossible, for a man of mature age to carry back his mind to his conceptions, such as they stood when he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feelings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom he blindly followed but imperfectly apprehended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and quasi philosophical point of view which the ancient myths present to us. can follow perfectly the imagination and feeling which dic tated these tales, and we can admire and sympathize with

*Altered from Grote.

*

We

them as animated, sublime, and affecting poetry; but we are too much accustomed to matter of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally, and accepted as serious reality."

With progress in the arts came intercourse between nations. Travellers soon discovered that the assumption of the exclusive possession of devout and moral men by their respective creeds, were narrow and most injurious prejudices. They saw that the various national divinities were described in similar words, and worshipped with similar ceremonies. They found that justice and benevolence were not confined to any one country, or limited within the bounds of any one form of faith. They discovered the absurdity of believing in a family-god such as was the god of Abraham, or a national god, such as the Jewish divinity in the time of the Judges: they rose to the conception of one sole creator and governor of the universe.

As a necessary consequence of the belief in the immediate divine administration of all earthly affairs, the people supposed that every piece of good or evil fortune was the reward or punishment of a good or evil deed. Where the connection between the good deed and the good fortunebetween the evil deed and the evil fortune-was not seen, it was presumed that there was some counterbalancing deed, perhaps of a prior date-perhaps even of a remote ancestor. This was the universal opinion of early antiquity -in Greece and Rome as well as in Judea. With the progress of thought, men saw that this principle was unreasonable. But good and evil must be rewarded and punished to assert the contrary, would be to blaspheme the justice of the gods. A future life was conceived of, as an explanation of the difficulty: and the new state of existence was looked upon as an important step forwardelevating greatly the dignity and importance of humanity The new birth of a foul worm in the form of a beautiful winged insect, was interpreted as a hint to man of the new existence, and the name of the butterfly (Psyche) was used by the Greeks to designate the soul. With the rise of this dogma, the belief in the frequent divine visits to earth began to wane. Jehovah, in a human form, walked, talked,

ate, and wrestled frequently with the patriarchs in the time of Moses, he manifested himself only on rare occasions and in an entirely different method: and by the time of Isaiah he had changed again. Pausanias, a heathen, who wrote in the first half of the second century, A. D., said: "The men of those ancient days, on account of their righteousness and piety, were on terms of hospitality with the gods and their companions at the board, and when they acted uprightly they openly received honor from the gods, just as they were also visited with anger, if they committed any iniquity. And then also they who are still honored in this manner, became gods instead of men. Thus also, we can believe that a Lycaon was transformed into a beast, and Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, into a stone. But in my time, when vice has reached its loftiest summit, and has spread itself abroad over the whole country and in all cities, no one has passed from man to god, except only in name and out of flattery to power, and the anger of the gods arises at evil more tardily, and is not executed on men till after they have left this world And much which used in former times to take place, and which happens even now, those persons which have mixed falsehood with truth, have rendered incredible to the multitude." When men began to deny the divine interposition in human affairs in their own time, they soon began to doubt whether all those ancient records of the adventures of the gods on earth were not mere fables. "The atheistic philosophers" says Dionysius Halicarnassus, "if those persons deserve the name of philosophers, who scoff at all the appearances of the gods, which have taken place among the Greeks and the barbarians, would deduce all these histories from the trickery of man, and turn them into ridicule, as if none of the gods ever cared for any man; but he who does not deny the gods a providential care over men, but believes that the gods are benevolent to the good, and angry against evil men, will not judge these appearances to be incredible."

The desertion of the national God of Judea for a universal God, who looks with equal favor on men, came at a comparatively late day. Three centuries and a half before Paul, Alexander had united all the countries of western Asia under his sceptre, and this dominion with the oppor

tunities which it gave to his soldiers to see the superstitions of the Babylonians, Hindoos, Jews, Egyptians and Phoenicians could not but place the absurdity of their exclusive systems in a strong light. After the downfall of the Grecian empire, the Romans came with a still greater dominion. It would have been singular, indeed, if, under these circumstances, no teacher had arisen to attempt to establish in all parts of the great empire the doctrine that there was but one God, and that he looked upon all his earthly children with equal favor. Had a teacher risen in some semi-barbarous tribe, such as the Israelites are represented to have been in time of Samuel, when they had no intercourse with foreigners, but hated them all bitterly, and looked upon Jehovah as one of many divinities, who had an especial favor for them, and to whom, in return, they rendered an exclusive worship-if a teacher had risen in such a tribe to teach a universal God and a form-free religion, we might be surprised; but not in Judea, in the time of the Cesars, when all the ancient forms of faith were losing their credit, and when the people generally were ready to receive such a creed as Paul taught.

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§ 86. The priests monópolised all the learning in the early ages, and were the discoverers of the art of writing. As they were the ministers of the Gods, they were supposed to know the divine will. Their ordinances were of divine authority. Their writing was miraculous to the eyes of the astonished barbarian, who saw bones, leaves and skins which could speak and the sacredness of the writing was transferred from the mysterious character to the matter recorded with it. All scripture was sacred once; many nations had no uninspired books; history, poetry, proverbs, laws, love-songs-all were from the hand of God. As the productions of a God were much more reverenced than those of a man, the ancient lawgivers generally asserted that their laws had been dictated by the Gods: and this conduct was generally approved even by those, who fully understood the deception.

§ 87. The idea of a God-begotten child might, and did arise in two ways. Girls, and more especially the women employed in the temples, who had consecrated their maidenhood to their divinity, found it very convenient, if they dis

covered themselves in the family-way, to declare that they had been impregnated by a God. Such assertions made in the times, when Jupiter and Apollo were still the popular deities, and when the fables of their amorous adventures were received with universal faith, appeared probable enough in themselves, and no one could, or would prove them to be untrue. In some cases, a great genius was thought to show such transcendent powers that he could not be entirely of mortal parentage. The mortal maternity could not well be evaded; but human paternity never could be proved, and sometimes was denied.

§ 88. The Biblical glorification of David, and the prophetic promise that the throne should belong to his family forever, was, if we consider all the circumstances, natural enough. Nothing was more probable than that a usurper should desire the priests to prophesy the perpetuity of his dynasty a prophecy which might have much influence to secure its own fulfilment: and the priests would not be likely to deny the request of a powerful monarch-when the grant of it could do them personally no harm; for there was no probability that their prophecy could be falsified in their own generation. It was natural too, that David should be represented in a later age as the especial favorite of Jehovah. His dynasty was still on the throne-to glorify him was to flatter and please his royal descendants. Besides as his reign had been the most glorious in the annals of the nation, it was but reasonable to presume that he had been the greatest favorite of a deity, who was supposed to reward and punish virtue and vice in this world, with the abundance of material prosperity, or the bitterness of misery.

§ 89. The New Testament doctrine of passive submission, absurd and impolitic as it would be for us, in this age, was natural and even necessary for Jesus and the apostles. The Messiah, expected by the Jews, was to lead them to revolt against the foreign oppressor, reëstablish the independence of the nation, and elevate it to its ancient splendor. The Romans, acquainted with this Jewish expectation of a Messiah, and the character attributed to him, would naturally keep a sharp look-out and be ready to seize any one who should assume that name. Resistance