e
any other books of authority on this great theme than the poets? What
book of religious instruction and precept have you, or have you ever
had, corresponding to the volume of the Christians, called their
gospels?'

'We have none,' said Portia, as I paused compelling a rejoinder. 'It is
true, we have but our historians and our poets, with what we find in the
philosophers.'

'And the philosophers,' I replied, 'it will be seen at once can never
be in the hands of the common people. Whence then do they receive their
religious ideas, but from tradition, and the character of the deities of
heaven, as they are set forth in the poets? And if this be so, I need
not ask whether it be possible that the religion of Rome should be any
other than a source of corruption to the people. So far as the gods
should be their models, they can do no otherwise than help to sink their
imitators lower and lower in all filth and vice. Happily for Rome and
the world, lady, men instinctively revolt at such examples, and copy
instead the pattern which their own souls supply. Had the Romans been
all which the imitation of their gods would have made them, this empire
had long ago sunk under the deep pollution. Fronto and Aurelian--the
last at least sincere--aim at a restoration of religion. They would lift
it up to the highest place, and make it the sovereign law of Rome. In
this attempt, they are unconsciously digging away her very foundations;
they are leveling her proud walls with the earth. Suppose Rome were made
what Fronto would have her? Every Roman were then another Fronto--or
another Aurelian. Were that a world to live in? or to endure? These,
lady, are the enemies of Rome, Aurelian and Fronto. The only hope for
Rome lies, in the reception of some such principles as these of the
Christians. Whether true or false, as a revelation from Heaven, they are
in accordance with the best part of our nature, and, once spread abroad
and received, they would tend by a mighty influence to exalt it more and
more. They would descend, as it is of the nature of absolute truth to
do, and lay hold of the humblest and lowest and vilest, and in them
erect their authority, and bring them into the state, in which every
man should be, for the reason that he is a man. Helenism cannot do
this.'

'Notwithstanding what I have heard, Nicomachus, I think you must
yourself be a Christian. But whether you are or not, I grant you to
understand well what religion should