his own shadow. He cannot comprehend (or inclose within himself) God, who comprehends and incloses him; and therefore he vaguely magnifies his own powers, and calls the result God. God the infinite Spirit made man; but man in every system of religion makes God. In our own reason He is the best that we can imagine that is, our own selves purged of evil and extended. We cannot stretch beyond ourselves."

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Ay, but your gods were not the best you could conceive. They were lower of nature than man himself in some particulars, and were guilty of acts that you yourself would reprove."

"This is because you consider them purely in their mythical history, according to the notions of the common ignorant mass; not looking behind those acts which were purely typical, often simply allegorical, to the ideas which they represented and of which they were incarnations. You cannot believe that so low a system as this satisfied the spiritual needs of those august and refined souls who still shine like planets in the sky of thought. Do you suppose that Plato and Epictetus, that Zeno and Socrates, that Seneca and Cicero, with their expanded minds, accepted these low formulas of Divinity? As well might I suppose that the low superstitions of the Christian Church, in which the vulgar believe, represent the highest philosophy of the best thinkers. Yet for long centuries of superstition the Church has been accepted by you just as it stands, with its saints and

their miracles, and its singular rites and ceremonies. Nor has any effort been made to cleanse the bark of St. Peter of the barnacles and rubbish which encumber and defile it. Religious faith easily degenerates into superstition in the common mind. And why has the superstition been accepted? Simply because it is so deeply ingrained into the belief of the unthinking mass, that there might be danger of destroying all faith by destroying the follies and accidents which had become imbedded in it. Not only for this; by means of these very superstitions men may be led and governed, and leaders will not surrender or overthrow means of power. Yet the best minds," he continued, "did what they could in ancient days to purify and refine the popular faith, and sought even to elevate men's notions of the gods by educating their sense of the beautiful, and by presenting to them images of the gods unstained by low passions and glorious in their forms."

"But surely your idea of Jupiter or Zeus," I answered, “was most unworthy when compared with that which we entertain of the infinite God, the source of all created things, the sole and supreme Creator. The Hebrews certainly attained a far loftier conception in their Jehovah than you in your Jupiter.'

"What matter names?" he replied; "Zeus, Jehovah, God, are all mere names, and the ideas they represented were only differenced by the temperaments and character of the various peoples who worshiped them."

"But the Jehovah of the Jews was not merely the head ruler of many gods, but a single universal God, one and infinite!”

"No! I think not. The Jehovah of the Jews underwent many changes and developments with the growth of the Hebrew people; and in many of their writings He is represented as a passionate, vindictive, and even unreasonable and unjust God, whose passions were modified by human arguments. And, so far from being a universal God of all, He was specially the God of the Hebrews, and is so constantly represented in their Scriptures. He comes down upon earth and interferes personally in the doings of men, and talks with them, and discusses questions with them, and sometimes even takes their advice. In process of time this notion is modified, and assumes a nobler type; but He is never the Universal Father, nor the God whose essence is Love, never, that is, until the coming of Christ, who first enunciated the idea that God is love, - rejoicing over the saving of man, far and above all human passions. Vengeance is mine' was the original idea of Jehovah; and He was feared and worshiped by the Jews as their peculiar God, whose chosen people they were. As for his unity, whatever may have been the popular superstitions of the Greeks and Romans, God is recognized by the greatest and purest minds as one and indivisible, the Father of all, who commands all, who creates all, who is invisible and omnipotent. Do you not remember

the fragment of the Sibylline verses preserved by Lactantius, S. Theophilus Antiochenus, and S. Justinus, where it is said that Zeus was one being alone, self-creating, from whom all things are made, who beholds all mortals, but whom no mortal can behold?

Εἷς δ ̓ ἔστ ̓ αὐτογενής· ἑνὸς ἔκγονα πάντα τέτυκται,
Ἐν δ ̓ αὐτοῖς αὐτὸς περιγίγνεται· οὐδέ τις αὐτὸν
Εἰσοράᾳ θνητῶν, αὐτὸς δέ γε πάντας ὁρᾶται.

So, also, Pindar cries out:

“ Τί Θεός ; τί τὸ πᾶν.

So again, in the same spirit, the Appian hymn of Zeus :

says

Ἓν κράτος, εἷς δαίμων γένετο μέγας οὐρανὸν αἴθων

Ἐν δὲ τὰ πάντα τέτυκται· ἐν ᾧ τάδε πάντα κυκλεῖται.

And Euripides exclaims, 'Where is the house, the fabric reared by man, that could contain the immensity of God?'

Ποῖος δ ̓ ἂν οἶκος, τεκτόνων πλασθεὶς ὑπὸ

Δέμας, τὸ Θεῖον περιβάλλοι τοίχων πτυχαῖς,

and adds that the true God needs no sacrifices on his altar. And Æschylus, in like manner, says:

Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ ̓ οὐρανὸς,
Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα, χῶτι τῶν δ ̓ ὑπέρτερον.

And Sophocles, also in similar lines, proclaims the unity and universality of God. And Theocritus, in his Idylls,' echoes the same sentiment. The same cast of thought, the same lofty idea of God,

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1 See Divin. Inst., lib. i. c. 6.

is found among the ancient Romans. Lucan exclaims in his ' Pharsalia :'

'Jupiter est quod cumque vides, quo cumque moveris.' Valerius Soranus makes him the one universal, omnipotent God, the Father and Mother of us all:

'Jupiter omnipotens, regum rerumque deumque

Progenitor genetrixque deum deus unus et omnes.' 1

Can any statement be larger and more inclusive than this? Such indeed was the true philosophic idea of Jupiter, as entertained by the best and most exalted in ancient days. You must go to the highest sources to learn what the highest notions of Deity are among any people, and not grope among the popular superstitions and myths. Then, again, what nobler expressions of our relation to an infinite and universal spirit of God are to be found than in Epictetus and Seneca? God is near you, is with you, is within you,' Seneca writes. A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and all our good. There is no good man without God.' And again Even from a corner it is possible to Rise, therefore, and form

spring up into heaven.

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1 Val. Soranus, cited by St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, lib. vii. c. 9.

2 See these passages and others cited in S. Justinus, Cohortat. ad Græc. et de Monarchia; Clement of Alexandria, Stromat., lib. V., et Admonitio ad Gentes; S. Cyrillus Alexandrinus, Contra Julianum, lib. i.; Athenagoras, Legat. pro Christian.; Theodoretus, Graec. Affectionum: Curat, lib. 7.