inisters of law, of justice, and of retribution; and its Jupiter, and
Juno, and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the
heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that, in fact,
there exists no nation, no commonwealth, no history without a Theophany,
and along with it certain sacred legends detailing the origin of the
people, the government, the country itself, and the world at large. This
is especially true of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Their primitive
history is eminently _mythological_.

Grecian polytheism can not be otherwise regarded than as a
poetico-historical religion of _myth_ and _symbol_ which is under-laid
by a natural Theism; a parasitical growth which winds itself around the
original stem of instinctive faith in a supernatural Power and Presence
which pervades the universe. The myths are oral traditions, floating
down from that dim; twilight of _poetic_ history, which separates real
history, with its fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded
eternity--faint echoes from that mystic border-land which divides the
natural from the supernatural, and in which they seem to have been
marvellously commingled. They are the lingering memories of those
manifestations of God to men, in which he or his celestial ministers
came into visible intercourse with our race; the reality of which is
attested by sacred history. In all these myths there is a theogonic and
cosmogonic element. They tell of the generation of the celestial and
aerial divinities--the subordinate agents and ministers of the Divine
government. They attempt an explanation of the genesis of the visible
universe, the origin of humanity, and the development of human society.
In the presence of history, the substance of these myths is preserved by
_symbols_, that is, by means of natural or artificial, real or striking
objects, which, by some analogy or arbitrary association, shall suggest
the _idea_ to the mind. These symbols were designed to represent the
invisible attributes and operations of the Deity; the powers that
vitalize nature, that control the elements, that preside over cities,
that protect the nations: indeed, all the agencies of the physical and
moral government of God. Beneath all the pagan legends of gods, and
underlying all the elaborate mechanism of pagan worship, there are
unquestionably philosophical ideas, and theological conceptions, and
religious sentiments, which give as meaning, and even