were hardly more."

"The divinity ought no doubt to be above all else to us," Melissa
observed. "But when your laborer worships the sun, and looks for its
benefits, what is the difference between him and you, or me, or any of
us, though we call the sun Helios or Serapis, or what not?"

"Yes, yes," replied Andreas. "The sun is adored here under many
different names and forms, and your Serapis has swallowed up not only
Zeus and Pluto, but Phoebus Apollo and the Egyptian Osiris and Ammon, and
Ra, to swell his own importance. But to be serious, child, our fathers
made to themselves many gods indeed, of the sublime phenomena and powers
of Nature, and worshiped them admiringly; but to us only the names
remain, and those who offer to Apollo never think of the sun. With my
laborer, who is an Arab, it is different. He believes the light-giving
globe itself to be a god; and you, I perceive, do not think him wholly
wrong. But when you see a youth throw the discus with splendid strength,
do you praise the discus, or the thrower?"

"The thrower," replied Melissa. "But Phoebus Apollo himself guides his
chariot with his divine hands."

"And astronomers," the Christian went on, "can calculate for years to
come exactly where his steeds will be at each minute of the time. So no
one can be more completely a slave than he to whom so many mortals pray
that he will, of his own free-will, guide circumstances to suit them.
I, therefore, regard the sun as a star, like any other star; and worship
should be given, not to those rolling spheres moving across the sky in
prescribed paths, but to Him who created them and guides them by fixed
laws. I really pity your Apollo and the whole host of the Olympian gods,