which man himself has to encounter." And I believe this, that this
Greek tragedy, with its godlike men and manlike gods, and heroes who
had become gods by the very vastness of their humanity, was a
preparation, and it may be a necessary preparation, for the true
Christian faith in a Son of Man, who is at once utterly human and
utterly divine. That man is made in the likeness of God--is the root
idea, only half-conscious, only half-expressed, but instinctive,
without which neither the Greek Tragedies nor the Homeric Poems, six
hundred years before them, could have been composed. Doubtless the
idea that man was like a god degenerated too often into the idea that
the gods were like men, and as wicked. But that travestie of a great
truth is not confined to those old Greeks. Some so-called Christian
theories--as I hold--have sinned in that direction as deeply as the
Athenians of old.

Meanwhile, I say, that this long acquiescence in the conception of
godlike struggle, godlike daring, godlike suffering, godlike
martyrdom; the very conception which was so foreign to the
mythologies of any other race--save that of the Jews, and perhaps of
our own Teutonic forefathers--did prepare, must have prepared men to
receive as most rational and probable, as the satisfaction of their
highest instincts, the idea of a Being in whom all those partial rays
culminated in clear, pure light; of a Being at once utterly human and
utterly divine; who by struggle, suffering, self-sacrifice, without a
parallel, achieved a victory over circumstance and all the dark
powers which beleaguer main without a parallel likewise.

Take, as an example, the figure which you know best--the figure of
Antigone herself--devoting herself to be entombed alive, for the sake
of love and duty. Love of a brother, which she can only prove, alas!