t
we can understand the function of sorrow in the Providence of God, or
interpret the sudden calamities which sometimes overwhelm human hopes at
their highest aspiration,--which from the most serene and cloudless sky
evoke storms which leave not even a wreck from their vast ruin.

Nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher
sense does it attach to the character of Saviour. Apollo is, therefore,
fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of Admetus;
indeed, Danaues, in "The Suppliants" of AEschylus, appeals to Apollo for
protection on this very plea, addressing him as "the Holy One, and
an exiled God from heaven." Thus Hercules was compelled to serve
Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the
zodiac. AEsculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures
and death for the good of men. And Dionysus--himself the centre of all
joy--was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to wander in
the world. Thus he wandered through Egypt, finding no abiding-place, and
finally, as the story runs, came to the Phrygian Cybele, that he might
know in their deepest meaning--even by the initiation of sorrow--the
mysteries of the Great Mother. And, very significantly, it is from this
same initiation that _His_ wanderings have their end and his world-wide
conquest its beginning; as if only thus could be realized the
possibility both of triumph for himself and of hope for his followers.
For these wanderers can find rest only in a _suffering_ Saviour, by the
vision of whose deeper Passion they lose their sense of grief,--as Io on
Caucasus in sight of the transfixed Prometheus, and the Madonna at the
Cross.

It is worthy of more attention than we can give it here, yet we cannot
pass over in silence the fact, so important in this relation, that
Grecian Tragedy, in all its wonderful development under the three great
masters, was directly associated, and in its ruder beginnings completely
identified, with the worship of Dionysus. And this confirms our previous
hint, that the same element which made tragedy possible for Greece must
also be sought for in the development of its faith. There are those who
decry Grecian faith,--at the same time that they laud the Grecian drama
to the skies: but to the Greeks themselves, who certainly knew more than
we do as regards either, the drama was only an outgrowth of their faith,
and derived thence its highest significance. Thus