appears by natural endowments superior to his slave; or at least
it embitters the degradation of slavery, if he does _not_.
Greatly, therefore, must human interests have suffered, had this
jealous approximation of the two parties been the sole feature
noticeable in the relations between them. But there was a worse.
There was an original enmity between man and the Pantheon; not the
sort of enmity which we Christians ascribe to our God; _that_
is but a figure of speech: and even there is a derivative enmity;
an enmity founded on something in man _subsequent_ to his
creation, and having a ransom annexed to it. But the enmity of the
heathen gods was original--that is, to the very nature of man, and
as though man had in some stage of his career been their rival;
which indeed he was, if we adopt Milton's hypothesis of the gods
as ruined angels, and of man as created to supply the vacancy thus
arising in heaven.

Now, from this dreadful scheme of relations, between the human and
divine, under Paganism, turn to the relations under Christianity.
It is remarkable that even here, according to a doctrine current
amongst many of the elder divines, man was naturally superior to
the race of beings immediately ranking above him. Jeremy Taylor
notices the obscure tradition, that the angelic order was, by
original constitution, inferior to man; but this original precedency
had been reversed for the present, by the fact that man, in his
higher nature, was morally ruined, whereas the angelic race had not
forfeited the perfection of _their_ nature, though otherwise
an inferior nature. Waiving a question so inscrutable as this, we
know, at least, that no allegiance or homage is required from man
towards this doubtfully superior race. And when man first finds
himself called upon to pay tributes of this nature as to a being