get a certain hardness of heart. It is true that
men have done wrong--hence their pain; but back of all this there is
something infinitely soothing, a light that does not wound, which says
no harsh thing, even although the darkest of the spirits turns to it in
its agony, for the darkest of human spirits has still around him this
first glory which shines from a deeper being within, whose history may
be told as the legend of the Hero in Man.

Among the many immortals with whom ancient myth peopled the spiritual
spheres of humanity are some figures which draw to themselves a more
profound tenderness than the rest. Not Aphrodite rising in beauty from
the faery foam of the first seas, not Apollo with sweetest singing,
laughter, and youth, not the wielder of the lightning could exact the
reverence accorded to the lonely Titan chained on the mountain, or to
that bowed figure heavy with the burden of the sins of the world;
for the brighter divinities had no part in the labor of man, no such
intimate relation with the wherefore of his own existence so full of
struggle. The more radiant figures are prophecies to him of his destiny,
but the Titan and the Christ are a revelation of his more immediate
state; their giant sorrows companion his own, and in contemplating them
he awakens what is noblest in his own nature; or, in other words, in
understanding their divine heroism he understands himself. For this in
truth it seems to me to mean: all knowledge is a revelation of the self
to the self, and our deepest comprehension of the seemingly apart divine
is also our farthest inroad to self-knowledge; Prometheus, Christ, are
in every heart; the story of one is the story of all; the Titan and the
Crucified are humanity.

If, then, we consider them as representing the human spirit and
disentangle from the myths their meaning, we shall find that whatever
reverence is due to that heroic love, which descended from heaven for
the redeeming of a lower nature, must be paid to every human being.
Christ is incarnate in all humanity. Prometheus is bound for ever within
us. They are the same. They are a host, and the divine incarnation
was not spoken of one, but of all those who, descending into the lower
world, tried to change it into the divine image, and to wrest out of
chaos a kingdom for the empire of light. The angels saw below them in
chaos a senseless rout blind with elemental passion, for ever warring
with discordant cries which broke in