in
place of them a more serious religion. He died a martyr to this purer
faith, killed by the women, who were incited to this, no doubt, by the
priests of the old Bacchic worship.

The worship of Dionysos Zagreus, which was the Orphic form of Bacchism,
contained the doctrines of retribution in another life,--a doctrine common
to all the Greek Mysteries.

It would seem probable, from an investigation of this subject, that two
elements of worship are to be found in the Greek religion, which were
never quite harmonized. One is the worship of the Olympian deities, gods
of light and day, gods of this world, and interested in our present human
life. This worship tended to promote a free development of character; it
was self-possessed, cheerful, and public; it left the worshipper unalarmed
by any dread of the future, or any anxiety about his soul. For the Olympic
gods cared little about the moral character of their worshippers; and the
dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by any
rites, and must be encountered manfully, as one meets the inevitable.

The other worship, running parallel with this, was of the Cthonic gods,
deities of earth and the under-world, rulers of the night-side of nature,
and monarchs of the world to come. Their worship was solemn, mysterious,
secret, and concerned expiation of sin, and the salvation of the soul
hereafter.

Now, when we consider that the Egyptian popular worship delighted in just
such mysteries as these; that it related to the judgment of the soul
hereafter; that its solemnities were secret and wrapped in dark symbols;
and that the same awful Cthonic deities were the objects of its
reverence;--when we also remember that Herodotus and the other Greek
writers state that the early religion of the Pelasgi was derived from
Egypt, and that Orpheus, the Thracian, brought thence his doctrine,--there
seems no good reason for denying such a source. On the other hand, nothing
can be more probable than an immense influence on Pelasgic worship,
derived through Thrace, from Egypt. This view is full of explanations, and
makes much in the Greek mythology clear which would otherwise be obscure.

The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, for example, seems to be an
adaptation to the Hellenic mind and land of the Egyptian myth of Osiris
and Isis. Both are symbols, first, of natural phenomena; and, secondly, of
the progress of the human soul. The sad Isis seeking Osiris, and the