are so are our gods, and what man worships is what he himself
would be. The placid Egyptian nature smiles on the face of the sphinx.
The gods of India reflect the terror of its heat and its beasts and
serpents, the fertility of its soil, and the exuberance of its people's
imagination. The glorious Pantheon of Greece--

Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hashed air with everlasting love--

embodies the wise and graceful fancies of the noblest race that ever
adorned the earth, compared with whose mythology the Christian system is
a hideous nightmare. The Roman gods wear a sterner look, befitting their
practical and imperial worshippers, and Jove himself is the ideal genius
of the eternal city. The deities of the old Scandinavians, whose blood
tinges our English veins, were fierce and warlike as themselves, with
strong hands, supple wrists, mighty thews, lofty stature, grey-blue eyes
and tawny hair. Thus has it ever been. So Man created god in his own
image, in the image of Man created he him; male and female created he
them.

GOD AND THE WEATHER.

With characteristic inconsistency the Christian will exclaim "Here
is another blasphemous title. What has God to do with the weather?"
Everything, sir. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without his
knowledge, and do you think he fails to regulate the clouds? The
hairs of your head are numbered, and do you think he cannot count the
rain-drops? Besides, your clergy pray for a change in the weather when
they find it necessary; and to whom do they pray but God? True, they are
getting chary of such requests, but the theory is not disavowed, nor can
it be unless the Bible is 'discarded as waste-paper; and the forms of
supplication for rain and fine weather still remain in the Prayer Book,
although many parsons must feel like the parish clerk who asked "What's
the use of praying for rain with the wind in that quarter?"

We might also observe that as God is omnipotent he does everything, or
at least everything which is not left (as parsons would say) to man's
freewill, and clearly the weather is not included in that list. God is
also omniscient, and what he foresees and does not alter is virtually
his own work. Even if a tile drops on a man's head in a gale of wind, it
falls, like the sparrow, by a divine rule; and it is really the Lord who
batters the poor fellow's skull. An action for assault would undoubtedly
lie, if there were any court in which t