cellaneous Essays; Joseph Muller's
Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy; Manual of Buddhism, by R. Spence
Hardy; Dr. H. Clay Trumbull's The Blood Covenant; Orthodox Buddhist
Catechism, by H. S. Olcott, edited by Prof. Elliott C. Coues. I have
derived some instruction from Samuel Johnson's bulky and diffuse books,
but more from James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions^ and
Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.

RELIGION OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.

CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY.

Religion among the lively and imaginative Greeks took a different form
from that of the Aryan race in India or Persia. However the ideas of
their divinities originated in their relations to the thought and life
of the people, their gods were neither abstractions nor symbols. They
were simply men and women, immortal, yet having a beginning, with
passions and appetites like ordinary mortals. They love, they hate, they
eat, they drink, they have adventures and misfortunes like men,--only
differing from men in the superiority of their gifts, in their
miraculous endowments, in their stupendous feats, in their more than
gigantic size, in their supernal beauty, in their intensified pleasures.
It was not their aim "to raise mortals to the skies," but to enjoy
themselves in feasting and love-making; not even to govern the world,
but to protect their particular worshippers,--taking part and interest
in human quarrels, without reference to justice or right, and without
communicating any great truths for the guidance of mankind.

The religion of Greece consisted of a series of myths,--creations for
the most part of the poets,--and therefore properly called a mythology.
Yet in some respects the gods of Greece resembled those of Phoenicia and
Egypt, being the powers of Nature, and named after the sun, moon, and
planets. Their priests did not form a sacerdotal caste, as in India and
Egypt; they were more like officers of the state, to perform certain
functions or duties pertaining to rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
They taught no moral or spiritual truths to the people, nor were they
held in extraordinary reverence. They were not ascetics or enthusiasts;
among them were no great reformers or prophets, as among the sacerdotal
class of the Jews or the Hindus. They had even no sacred books, and
claimed no esoteric knowledge. Nor was their office hereditary. They
were appointed by the rulers of the state, or elected by the people
themselves; they imposed