grovelling in the intellectual debasement of a polytheistic and idolatrous
religion, with no support for the present, no hope for the future,--living
without the knowledge of a supreme and superintending Providence, and
dying without the expectation of a blissful immortality,--we shall at the
same time find ample testimony that these consoling doctrines were
secretly believed by the philosophers and their disciples.

But though believed, they were not publicly taught. They were heresies
which it would have been impolitic and dangerous to have broached to the
public ear; they were truths which might have led to a contempt of the
established system and to the overthrow of the popular superstition.
Socrates, the Athenian sage, is an illustrious instance of the punishment
that was meted out to the bold innovator who attempted to insult the gods
and to poison the minds of youth with the heresies of a philosophic
religion. "They permitted, therefore," says a learned writer on this
subject[8], "the multitude to remain plunged as they were in the depth of
a gross and complicated idolatry; but for those philosophic few who could
bear the light of truth without being confounded by the blaze, they
removed the mysterious veil, and displayed to them the Deity in the
radiant glory of his unity. From the vulgar eye, however, these doctrines
were kept inviolably sacred, and wrapped in the veil of impenetrable
mystery."



The consequence of all this was, that no one was permitted to be invested
with the knowledge of these sublime truths, until by a course of severe
and arduous trials, by a long and painful initiation, and by a formal
series of gradual preparations, he had proved himself worthy and capable
of receiving the full light of wisdom. For this purpose, therefore, those