_us_ that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was
told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases
through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest
commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can be
written.

In two great battlegrounds of the human spirit the problem raised by
Prometheus has been fought out. On the ground of science, who does not
know the defiant and Titanic mood in which knowledge has at times been
sought? The passion for knowing flames through the gloom and depression
and savagery of the darker moods of the student. Difficulties are
continually thrust into the way of knowledge. The upper powers seem to
be jealous and outrageously thwarting, and the path of learning becomes
a path of tears and blood. That is all that has been reached by many a
grim and brave student spirit. But there is another possible
explanation; and there are those who have attained to a persuasion that
the gods have made knowledge difficult in order that the wise may also
be the strong.

The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there has
been an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, and
then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness
of the human _debacle_. The only aspect of the powers above them has
seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in
the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts
up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the
worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing
man upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what they
please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest of
Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling a
noble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, there
dawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the same hope that Prometheus
vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has understood the story of
Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is divine
love. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous cruelty
yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end of
time, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God is
love, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted.

Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is tha