oubtless the
idea that man was like a god degenerated too often into the idea that
the gods were like men, and as wicked. But that travestie of a great
truth is not confined to those old Greeks. Some so-called Christian
theories--as I hold--have sinned in that direction as deeply as the
Athenians of old.

Meanwhile, I say, that this long acquiescence in the conception of
godlike struggle, godlike daring, godlike suffering, godlike
martyrdom; the very conception which was so foreign to the
mythologies of any other race--save that of the Jews, and perhaps of
our own Teutonic forefathers--did prepare, must have prepared men to
receive as most rational and probable, as the satisfaction of their
highest instincts, the idea of a Being in whom all those partial rays
culminated in clear, pure light; of a Being at once utterly human and
utterly divine; who by struggle, suffering, self-sacrifice, without a
parallel, achieved a victory over circumstance and all the dark
powers which beleaguer main without a parallel likewise.

Take, as an example, the figure which you know best--the figure of
Antigone herself--devoting herself to be entombed alive, for the sake
of love and duty. Love of a brother, which she can only prove, alas!
by burying his corpse. Duty to the dead, an instinct depending on no
written law, but springing out of the very depth of those blind and
yet sacred monitions which prove that the true man is not an animal,
but a spirit; fulfilling her holy purpose, unchecked by fear,
unswayed by her sisters' entreaties. Hardening her heart
magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then after proving her
godlike courage, proving the tenderness of her womanhood by that
melodious wail over her own untimely death and the loss of marriage
joys, which some of you must know from the music of Mendelssohn, and
which the late Dean Milman has put into English thus:

Come, fellow-citizens, and see
The desolate Antigone.
On the last path her steps shall treed,
Set forth, the journey of the dead,
Watching, with vainly lingering gaze,
Her last, last sun's expiring rays.

Never to see it, never more,
For down to Acheron's dread shore,
A living victim am I led
To Hades' universal bed.
To my dark lot no bridal joys
Belong, nor o'er the jocund noise
Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me,
But death, cold death, my only spouse shall be.

Oh tomb! Oh bridal chamber! Oh deep-delved
And strongly-guarded mansion! I descend