ough the earth in
different languages and forms, varying with the poetry and climate of the
country or countries thereafter occupied, and adapted from time to time to
the existing exigencies of the times. Thence sprang the origin of
mythologies, or, in other words, fabulous histories of the fructifying
energies of Nature, whether developed in the germination of the vegetable
kingdom, or in an occasional poetical version of some heroic act of one in
power.

This nation, the old Assyrian, became dispersed at the destruction of their
great temple. But their political power everywhere was mysteriously
preserved. When the magi became organized in Media, they spread in every
direction. From earliest days we find their worship amid the nations
conquered by Joshua. We see them in the traces of the [Greek: Oi Poimenes],
or shepherd-kings of Egypt, and in the sorcerers of the days of Moses. We,
find them reformed by Zoroaster in Persia. They are conspicuous among the
Greeks, who derived their mysteries from Egypt; and in the worship of Isis
at Rome, never indigenous there. And even in later days (those of Darius,
Belshazzar, and Cyrus), they seem to be thoroughly {32} re-established in
their original birthplace. And, strange as it may appear, we find their
power over kings, generals, nations, and people, in the hands of the
priesthood, by means of their mysteries, from all early history, until
affected by the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Regarding, then, the off-shoot from patriarchal tradition to be the origin
of pagan worship; referring also to the first formation of cities, and of
one immense kingdom, by the descendants of Ham (accursed by his prophetic
ancestor), by whom an empire was first established; to Nimrod's
deification; to the preservation in the priesthood of future political
power; to the fact that after his death they would and might thereby
perpetuate the same; that wherever thereafter dispersed, they did so by
their revelations by mysteries, in which they controlled not only the
masses of the people, but those who governed them, in whatsoever nation
then known--we arrive at the conclusion that the mysteries were the
elements of religious and consequently of political power.

The important Greek mysteries, of the details whereof we know most,
were--1. The _Eleusinian_. 2. The _Samothracian_, which originated in Crete
and Phrygia, and were celebrated in the former country in honor of Jupiter.
Fro