worship, there was nothing at all; nothing to believe, nothing
to understand. A set of legendary tales undoubtedly there was,
connected with the mythologic history of each separate deity. But
in what sense you understood these, or whether you were at all
acquainted with them, was a matter of indifference to the priests;
since many of these legends were variously related, and some had
apparently been propagated in ridicule of the gods, rather than in
their honor.

With Christianity a new scene was opened. In this religion the
_cultus_, or form of worship, was not even the primary business,
far less was it the exclusive business. The worship flowed as a
direct consequence from the new idea exposed of the divine nature,
and from the new idea of man's relations to this nature. Here were
suddenly unmasked great doctrines, truths positive and directly
avowed: whereas, in Pagan forms of religion, any notices which then
were, or seemed to be, of circumstances surrounding the gods, related
only to matters of fact or accident, such as that a particular
god was the son or the nephew of some other god; a truth, if it
_were_ a truth, wholly impertinent to any interest of man.

As there are some important truths, dimly perceived or not at all,
lurking in the idea of God,--an idea too vast to be navigable as
yet by the human understanding, yet here and there to be coasted,--I
wish at this point to direct the reader's attention upon a passage
which he may happen to remember in Sir Isaac Newton: the passage
occurs at the end of the 'Optics;' and the exact expressions I do
not remember; but the sense is what I am going to state: Sir Isaac
is speaking of God; and he takes occasion to say, that God is not
good, but goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is not infinite,