n
conceive it. The supreme power is the same immortal lover of justice and
the same hater of iniquity; and justice means what we mean by justice,
and iniquity what we mean by iniquity. There is no diffidence, no
scepticism on this matter; the moral law is as sure as day and night,
summer and winter. Thus in the sixteenth Iliad--

'When in the market-place men deal unjustly, and the rulers decree
crooked judgment, not regarding the fear of God,' God sends the storm,
and the earthquake, and the tempest, as the executors of his vengeance.

Again, Ulysses says--

'God looks upon the children of men, and punishes the wrong-doer.'

And Eumaeus--

'The gods love not violence and wrong; but the man whose ways are
righteous, him they honour.'

Even when as mere Olympians they put off their celestial nature, and mix
in earthly strife, and are thus laid open to earthly suffering, a
mystery still hangs about them; Diomed, even while he crosses the path
of Ares, feels all the while 'that they are short-lived who contend with
the Immortals.' Ajax boasts that he will save himself in spite of
heaven, and immediately the wave dashes him upon the rocks. One light
word escaped Ulysses in the excitement of his escape from the Cyclops,
which nine years of suffering hardly expiated.

The same spirit which teaches Christians that those who have no earthly
friend have specially a friend above to care for and to avenge them,
taught the Ionians a proverb which appears again and again in Homer,
that the stranger and the poor man are the patrimony of God; and it
taught them, also, that sometimes men entertained the Immortals
unawares. It was a faith, too, which was more than words with them; for
we hear of no vagrant acts or alien acts, and it was sacrilege to turn
away from the gate whoever asked its hospitality. Times are changed. The
world was not so crowded as it is now, and perhaps rogues were less
abundant; but at any rate those antique Greeks did what they said. We
say what they said, while in the same breath we say, too, that it is
impossible to do it.

In every way, the dependence of man on a special heavenly Providence was
a matter of sure and certain conviction with them. Telemachus appeals to
the belief in the Council at Ithaca. He questions it at Pylos, and is at
once rebuked by Athene. Both in Iliad and Odyssey to live justly is the
steady service which the gods require, and their favour as surely
follows when that service