frequently from translations and abridgments of originals, than from the originals themselves. Old well-authenticated facts have been treated under a new aspect; but there is no pretension to the discovery of a single new fact."

It is always valuable work to bring together to a focus radii that extending into dim distances afar might otherwise be difficult to find; but there is need of great care lest they be distorted in the process. The author quotes from Wordsworth the lines:

For I have learned To look on Nature; not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A Presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting

suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of

man:

A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

But on the next page he defines Pantheism as the "abstract worship of nature." Now, a true Pantheist would see God's hand not only in the vigour and suggestiveness of nature, but in every influence that stirs the world of mind, and would

worship not as in the abstract, but in poetic glow that seems to reach to very consciousness of presence. The author's Pantheism is a little too cold and intellectual. He says: "Pantheism is strictly a religion for the few, not for the many." The great mass of the people are as little capable of Pantheism as they are of Monotheism. They are not capable of lofty abstractions, but must have recourse to forms and ceremonies, to images and pictures."

Under the head of Oriental Pantheism, which must be meant to represent the religion of the earliest times promised by the author, we find reference to the Vedas, Brahminism, other Hindu philosophies, and especially Buddhism, the Vedanta philosophy, and the Bhagavad-Gita; but with some surprise we note that no chapter is given to the oldest Pantheism we know of, that of Egypt.

In the section devoted to Modern Pantheism an important place is given to the little-known Vanini, of whom a full and interesting account is given. But Vanini appears to

have been an advocate of annihilation rather than a pantheist. To the pantheistic mind it is easier to accept life beyond the seen than to conceive a great wall set up behind which the power that pervades all things and enkindles life has lost its sway.

IF the religious philosophy of Greece has been neglected, the error has lain the other way with regard to Homer. Perhaps an undue prominence has been given to the philosophic element of this rhapsodic school, which was eminently a school of poetry, in which even theology was for the most part regarded from the side of the dramatic and the picturesque, and taken as it actually existed around, rather than as arising from any earnest belief of the singer's own. Mr. Gladstone, as we have shown, sees in Homer the remains of primitive monotheism. Truly, no doubt; but whether this monotheism be primeval or merely prehistoric, there is unfortunately in Homer very little of it.

Seneca, some eighteen centuries ago, was laughing at the critics for disputing amongst themselves as to which of the philosophic sects of their time Homer had belonged. He is discoursing (Ep. lxxxviii.) upon the liberal arts, as being so called because they enlarge the mind and become a free man; and he characterises as puerile the stepping aside from the study of wisdom into the weighing of syllables and the scanning of verses.

Especially he stigmatises mere argumentativeness, and very wittily instances the discussions which had "For one

turned upon Homer.

while," he says, "they make him a stoic, in pursuit of virtue alone, and flying from pleasure, so as not to be drawn thereby from what is right and fit, even by a promise of immortality; at another time they represent him as represent him as an epicurean, highly extolling the state of a peaceful city, whose inhabitants spend their time in songs and banquets; at another time as a peripatetic, allowing three sorts of good; at another time as an academic or sceptic, affirming all things to be uncertain. Now to me he seems to be none of these in particular, because their several doctrines are all to be found in him."

This is as if we were to fight over Shakespeare, whether he were to be pronounced a ritualist or an evangelical, a spiritualist or a follower of Comte. The great minds, whether of poets or philosophers, are nowise sectarian, though their followers may strive often to constrain them to an appearance of support of cramped and dogmatie

views.

Learned volumes have been compiled, and especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, upon the Hebraizing tendencies of Homerupon the question whether he was a moral philosopher, and also upon his theology, gnomology, and psychology.

The theology of Homer is indeed most confusing. Representing the conceptions of his time by record rather than preachment, he has not the unifying consciousness of a religious man, which with glowing faith and spiritual instinct burns away minor external vagaries of belief, and fuses the stray centralising tendencies he finds into one harmonious agreement.

The Greek poetic mind had a marvellous power of absorption from the more deeply religious thought of other peoples. Egypt, India, Phoenicia, contributed not only conceptions of deity, but cosmogonical plans and visions of the unseen. With large, easy, artistic hand, Greece wrought them all into her pantheon and her philosophy, as a modeller might blend wet anasses of white and yellow clay, or a sculptor fit to his work alternate ivory and gold.

In the Homeric theology divinity is seen in series after series of diverse powers, wondrous activities, on high, below, afar, anigh, forces of aid, of comfort, of gloom and fear, potencies small and great.

There are the high Olympian deities, in whose king reside whatever monotheistic elements were called for by the higher consciousness of man, and whatever conceptions of majesty, rule, and justice remained from older revelations of heavenly things.

But Zeus, if to one Homeric singer he be true Lord of all, yet with another is made to do ungodly things; and even Zeus, according to a decaying tradition of

an older theology, is himself but God of God, being son of a careworn personification of Time. In the Olympian group, after Zeus of the bright sky, are Herè, his sisterwife; Athenè, queen of the air, or daughter of the sky, regarded generally as representing wisdom, and in harmony with Zeus, while being on earth the clear-seeing help of heroes. Phoibos, the god of arrowy rays, with his twin sister Artemis, is akin to the sun, but rather as moving in its far-darting beams than as attached to its bulk. Hephaistos is fire flame, a mechanical power, occupying a menial rather than an exalted position in Olympos. Ares is stormy turbulence personified, a confusing influence, belonging to the din rather than to the direction of war.

Aphrodité is brightness rising from sca-foam, and flushing passion of love. Hermes is the intellectual faculty and the emblem of craft, with a messenger's office and a movement like the wind. In many respects he corresponds with the Egyptian Thoth, being, like him too, the guide of souls bound for Hades.

There are the earth-pervading deities, human-formed blossomings of Nature, representing rich wealth and summer, and the power and elevation of wine. There are the under-world deities, reigning over a world hidden from the sun, but with the power themselves of visiting the light of Olympos. From the Hades being regarded as localised beneath the earth, the under-world gods became the patron deities and guardians of the treasures of the mines. the real Hades come the avenging lights, the Erinyes, who can see in the dark and discover evil deeds. The attendant ministers of the Governor of Hades are also Night, Sleep, Death, and Dream. Among lesser deities is Poseidon, the lord

From

of the forces of the sea, in whose group of powers are water-dwellers and masters of sea monsters, and haunters of sea caves and whirlpools, river-gods, tutelary nymphs and deities of woods, wells and mountains, flocks and herds, with the less gentle persons of the Seirens of blandishment and the Harpies of havoc and destruction. There are inspirers, messengers, servants, and poetic impersonations without end; Hours, Muses; Iris, the rainbow messenger; Themis, the oracular will of Zeus and dispenser of justice; Eileithya, the moon-ray loosener of day's tense and highly-strung cords, and president over travail; the Charites who hold hands and dance around us, typifying graces and favours flowing to and fro, the Hearth-fire goddess and emblem of domestic truth and fair dealing; Aisa, the uttered word of Zeus and type of destiny. Among fates and powers were Atè-human folly and mischief becoming a fate or doomDiscord, Fear, Rumour, Uproar, Conflict, and Prowess.

The faith that sees God everywhere, and regards the various machinery of nature as provinces swayed by divine emanations, may be a more real and glowing one than that which chains its conception of deity within an iron cage of doctrinal bars and bolts; but, with such a crowd of divine persons as we find in Homer, and with the conception of Zeus as almighty ruler only here and there apparent, we can scarcely agree to regard the Homeric tradition in the light of a reaction against polytheistic agencies as accounting for natural phenomena. It seems rather to constitute a poetic assent to a polytheism enhanced by pantheistic sympathy and occasionally inspired by a glimpse of the unity of the source of law.

In intellectual moods it is pos

sible to shut out from view the occasions, too insignificant for scientific apparatus to note, in which circumstance seems to adjust itself to the individual-to become as it were confidingly personal-without any natural law that the scientific mind so coldly defines, being in the least degree shaken. But for the mind less bound up and limited by specialistic training, it will scarcely be possible absolutely to exclude the sense of mysterious guidance; and we may ever expect a repugnance to the frigid theories that would make God's universe voiceless of himself.

In Homer we find this dim popular instinct forced outwards into definite form, with a result that there are presented a motley crowd of anthropomorphic deities endowed with noble attributes, but mingling therewith human qualities not only of virtue but of vice.

When in the Iliad Zeus thunders, it is regarded as a providential sign, which is superstition, and even harmful to poetry if too largely introduced. A sign like this-which to the scientific man denotes that constant play of physical forces upon the equilibrium of which our natural lives dependbeing so evidently addressed to no single individual, could only be made spiritually momentous relatively to each different superstitious mood to which it appeals. To a poet the coincidence of calamity with an eclipse or a storm, or the flight of an ominous bird might seem appropriate; but a priest who had to listen to a variety of human complaints and sorrows would soon discover that there was no inevitable connection between the supposed cause and effect; save that darkness might produce dejection, a storm alarm, or the sudden entry of any unwonted thing a panic. Or, discovering that in certain parts of the earth an

east wind, by reason of the harshness it gathers from the regions it traverses, frets the nerves of sensitive folk, and so may prepare the ground for quarrels, or that thunder is mostly preceded by a distressing heaviness of the air, priest, poet, and scientist might all be at one.

We must not attempt to find philosophic order or ethical centre in the Homeric tradition, for the singers of the epic did not profess to focus thought, but only to catch a gleam from each pencil of bright rays that attracted their imagination.

The stories that cluster round Zeus are evidence enough of the impossibility of proving Homer consistent. First there are generalisations not incompatible with a view of Zeus as the Supreme Being in a monotheistic sense. Events occur because the will of Zeus is being accomplished. If he nods assent to anything yet unfulfilled, the subordinate hierarchy may feel full confidence, "for this from me is the greatest pledge with the immortals; for whatever is mine that I shall sanction by the nod of the head is not to be retracted, nor is it fallacious nor unfulfilled." He restrains all other immortal powers until that fulfilment. Zeus is the most powerful. Honour is from Zeus. Even a bodeful dream, and that which is to mislead, is from Zeus, and performs his fateful purpose. He calls all the immortal powers whatever to council, and so becomes the supreme will, for there is no word of refusal.

There is a beautiful utterance put in the mouth of Hector: "Thou biddest me obey birds of far-sweeping wing, but these I nowise regard, nor care, whether they rush to the right toward both dawn and sun, or to the left toward the darkening west. But let us obey the will of mighty Zeus,

who ruleth all, mortal and immortal. There is one augury, the best, to be a bulwark of our fatherland."

Of the great deity Phoibos Apollo, it is the subordinate attribute to declare to men the unerring counsel of Zeus.

The aged Trojan monarch Priam would have distrusted any order of earthly beings, even the heavencommissioned prophet, soothsayer, or priest, but having had word and vision from a deity direct, and this only a bright little wind-footed messenger from Zeus, he follows implicitly the injunction given him. It is not only because he has seen Iris and beheld her face to face that he obeys, but because she comes as ambassadress from Zeus, who, though remote, is full of care and pity.

Zeus fulfils not the intentions of all men. A well-meaning counsel is one not without God." If a tyrant is hated, the fact is to be reverentially regarded, for the people may be following for their oracle the very voice of God. On the other hand, obedience is due to a ruler, because his sceptre is from Zeus. "God, if he be willing. can save a man from a distance." "A match for many peoples is the man whom Zeus cherishes in his heart."

These conceptions might be found in any monotheistic scriptures. There are in Homer passages closely akin to such expressions as the following:

"God himself is with us for captain:" (2 Chron. xiii. 12.) "Let not the army of Israel go with thee; for the Lord is not with Israel... but if thou wilt go, do it, be strong for the battle: God shall make thee fall before the enemy, for God hath power to help, and to cast down:" (2 Chron. xxv. 8.) "Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth both evil and good:" (Lam. iii. 38.) "Both