ancients; it has never been wanting, from the beginning of the human race.”[1] There is but one Religion, and it can never die out. Unquestionably there were souls beautifully pious, and devoutly moral, who felt the Kingdom of Heaven in their bosom, and lived it out in their lowly life. Still, it must be confessed the beneficial influence of the public Worship of Polytheists on public and private virtue, was sadly weak.[2] The popular life is determined, in some measure, by the popular Conception of God, and that was low, and did not correspond to the pure Idea of Him;[3] still the Sentiment was at its work.
But worship was more obviously woven up with public life under this form than under that which subsequently took its place. A wedding or a funeral, peace and war, seed-time and harvest, had each its religious rite. It was the mother of philosophy, of art, and science, though, like Saturn in the fable, she sought to devour her own children, and met a similar and well-merited fate. Classic Polytheism led to contentedness with the world as it was, and a sound cheerful enjoyment of its goodness and delight. Religion itself was glad and beautiful.[4] But its idea of life was little higher than its fact. However, that weakish cant and snivelling sentimentality of worship, which disgrace our day, were unknown at that stage.[5] The popular faith oscillated between Unbelief and Superstition. Plato wisely excluded the mythological poets from his ideal commonwealth. The character of the Gods as it was painted by the popular mythology of Egypt,
- ↑ Retract. I. 13. See also Civ. Dei, VIII. and Cont. Acad. III. 20.
- ↑ On the influence of the national cultus, see Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. VII. 65, 66, XIV. 24, et al.; Homeric Hymns I. vs. 147, et seq.
- ↑ Plato is seldom surpassed, in our day, in his conception of some of the qualities of the Divine Being. He was mainly free from that anthropomorphitic tendency which Christians have derived from the ruder portions of the Old Testament. See Rep. Lib. IV. passim. But neither he nor Aristotle—a yet greater man—ever attained the idea of a God who is the Author, or even the Master, of the material world. God and Matter were antagonistic forces, mutually hostile.
- ↑ See the pleasant remarks of Plutarch on the cheerful character of public worship, Opp. Vol. II. p. 1101, et seq., ed. Xylander; Strabo, Lib. X. Ch. iii. iv. Opp. iv. p. 167, et seq., ed. Siebenkees and Tschucke.
- ↑ Many beautiful traits of Polytheism may be seen in Plutarch's Moral Works, especially the treatises on Superstition; That it is not possible to live well according to Epicurus; of Isis and Osiris; of the tardy Vengeance of God. See the English Version, Lond. 1691, 4 vols. 8vo.
