ual. Hence, the heathen gods were reflections of the qualities most admired or feared during the times in which they originated; and to the same cause were owing the inconsistencies and the vices palmed upon them by the stories of different ages and nations, whose gods became lumped together; and hence the trouble that the philosopher had in endeavoring to reconcile the popular superstitions with a theology more becoming.* Plutarch, who was a priest at Delphi, and a regular devout pagan, but good-hearted and imbued with philosophy, is shocked at the popular stories of the rapes and quarrels of the gods; and Plato, on a similar account, was for banishing Homer from his republic. Plutarch will not allow that it was the real Apollo who fought a serpent and afterwards had to purify himself. He said it must have been a likeness of him, a demon. In other words the gods of Plutarch were to resemble the highest ideas which Plutarch could form of dignity and power. Hence, the greater philosophers whose ardor in the pursuit of truth rendered them still more desirous of departing from conventional degradations of it, came to agree that the nature of the deity was inconceivable; and that the most exalted being they

* Virtue or vice either if accompanied with power, will do to make a god of in barbarous times, and till mankind learn the perniciousness of that sort of apotheosis. An Eastern writer says that Pharaoh wished to pass for a divinity with his subjects, and had frequent conversation with the devil for that purpose. The devil put him off from time to time, till he told him one day that the hour was arrived. "How is that," cried Pharaoh, - "why is it time now, and was not before?"—"The reason is," replied the devil, "that you have not hitherto been quite bad enough: at length you have become intolerable, and there is no alternative between a revolt of your subjects, and their belief in your being a god. Once persuade them of that, and there is nothing so extravagant, either in word or deed, which they will not take from you with respect." D'Herbelot, article Feraoun.

could fancy was at an incalculable distance from it, -an emanation, a being deputed, a sort of spiritual incarnation of one of the divine thoughts;-if we may so speak without absurdity and without blame. Plato, for instance, observing the moral imperfections of our planet, and not knowing how to account for them any more than we do (for the first cause of evil is always left in the dark), imagined that this world was created by what he called a Demiurgus, or inferior divine energy; just as an artist less than Raphael might paint a fine picture though not so good as what might have come from the hands of the greater one. If you asked him how he made out that the chief creator did not do the work himself, he would have referred you to the fact of the imperfection and to the existence of different degrees of skill and beauty in which we see all about us; for he thought he had a right to argue from analogy, in default of more certain principles. This right he undoubtedly possessed, and it was natural and reasonable to exert it; but considering the imperfection of the human faculties and the false reports they make to us, even of things cognizable to the senses, it is, in truth, impossible to argue with any certainty from things human to things divine. The only service to all appearance, which our faculties can do for us in these questions, is to save us from the admission of gratuitous absurdities and dogmas dishonorable to the idea of a Divine Being, and to encourage us to guess handsomely and to good purpose. For sincerity at all events must not be gainsaid; otherwise belief and probability and principle and natural love and the earth itself slide from under our feet. The mystery of the permission of evil still remained; the mystery of imperfection and of cause itself was only thrown back; and in fact the invention of the Demiurgus was merely

shifting the whole mystery of Deity from a first cause to a second. The old dilemma between omnipotence and omnibenevolence perplexed the understanding then, as it. does now; and as this world was made the reflection of every other, or rather as evil was supposed to render all the operations of the Deity imperfect, except immediately in his own sphere; men seem to have overlooked among other guesses, the probability that evil may exist only in petty corners or minute portions of the universe, and even then be only the result of an experiment with certain elementary compounds to see whether they cannot be made planets of perfect happiness as well as the rest. For, after all, Plato's assumption of the innate and unconscious difficulty which matter presents in the working (or an inability of some sort, whatever it be, to render things perfect at once), is surely the best assumption among the hundreds that have been taken for granted on this point; seeing that it sets aside malignity, encourages hope, and stimulates us to an active and benign state of endeavor such as we may conceive to enlist us in the divine service. We must never take any thing on trust in order to make a handle of it for dictation or hypocrisy, or a selfish security, or an indolence which we may dignify with the title of resignation; but as we are compelled to assume or conjecture something or other, unless indeed we are deficient in the imaginative part of our nature, it is best to assume the best candidly, and acknowledge it to be an assumption in order that we may do the utmost we can. Happy opinions are the wine of the heart. What if this world be an experiment, part of which consists in our own co-operation, that is to say, in trying how far the inhabitants of it can acquire energy enough, and do credit enough, to the first cause, to add it finally to the number of blessed stars?

and what if more direct communication with us on the part of the operator, would of necessity put an end to the experiment? The petty human considerations of pride and modesty have nothing to do with the cordial magnitude of such guesses; and the beauty of them consists, we think, not merely in their cheerfulness and real piety, but in their adaptation to all experimental systems of utility, those of the most exclusive utilitarians not excepted. Such we confess is our own creed, which we boast at the same time to be emphatically Christian; and the good which our enthusiasm cannot help thinking such an opinion might do, will excuse us with the readers for this digression.*

The gods of Greece, taken in the popular view of them, were, upon the whole a jovial company, occasionally dispersed about the world, and assembling on Mount Olym

*The hope of a happier state of things on earth, argues nothing against a life hereafter. The fitness of a human soul for immortality may be a part of the experiment. The divinest preacher of eternity that has appeared, expressly anticipated a happier period for mankind in their human state, though many who are called his followers are eager to load both themselves and the world they live in with contumely, - themselves as "innately vicious," and the world as "a vale of tears." Such are the compliments they think to pay their Creator! Yet these are the persons who talk with the greatest devotion of resigning themselves to God's will, and who pique themselves upon having the most exalted ideas of his nature! How much better to think it his will that they should bestir themselves to improve their own natures and the world! How much better to think it consonant with his nature that they should help to drain the "vale of tears," as they call it, just as they would any other valley, beauteous and full of resources! They do not think it necessary to be resigned when they can work for themselves; why should they when they can work for others? Resignation is always good, provided it means only patience in the midst of endeavor, or repose after it; but when it implies a mere folding of the hands, and a despair of making any thing good out of "God's own work," it is surely the lowest and most equivocal aspect under which piety could wish to be drawn.

pus. They dined and supped there, and made love like a party of gallants at a king's table. A pretty girl served instead of a butler; and the Muse played the part of a band.* When they came down to earth, they behaved like the party going home; made love again after their fashion; interfered in quarrels, frightened the old and the feeble; and next day joined a campaign, or presided at an orthodox meeting. In short, they did whatever the vulgar thought gallant and heroical, and were particularly famous for having their own way. If a god offended against all humanity, he had his reasons for it, and was a privileged person. He could do no wrong. But if humanity went counter to a god, the offender and all his generation were to suffer for it. A lady who had resisted the violence of his virtue, was not to be believed whenever she spoke the truth; or your brother became an owl or a flint-stone; or your son was to become a criminal, or a madman, because his grandfather unwittingly married against the god's consent. The vulgar thought how wilful and unjust they would be themselves if they had power; they saw how much kings were given to those kinds of peccadilloes; and therefore, if they could have become gods, how much more they would have been ungodly! It is true the philosopher refined upon all this: and agreeably to the way in which Nature works, there was a sort of cultivation of energy underneath it and an instinct of something beyond

* See the description in books and prints, the marriage of Cupid and Psyche. Raphael made a picture of it. Augustus is charged with having made an impious entertainment in imitation of these "charming noons and nights divine." Ben Jonson, we suppose in consideration of King James, who besides being a classical monarch, was devout as well as debauched, — has taken the liberty of misrepresenting the charge in his Poetaster, and making Augustus astonished at the impiety in others.