the malice of supernatural powers. In all Pagan nations, it is
probable that religion would, an the whole, be a degrading influence;
although I see, even for such nations, two cases, at the least,
where the uses of a religion would be indispensable; viz. for the
sanction of _oaths_, and as a channel for gratitude not pointing
to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion _was_
degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion.
The noblest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left
deeply scored in their very use of their word _religlo_, their
testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism
could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author,
in speaking of an individual, without more or less of sneer. Reading
that word, in a Latin book, we all try it and ring it, as a petty
shopkeeper rings a half-crown, before we venture to receive it as
offered in good faith and loyalty. Even the Greeks are nearly in
the same άπορια, when they wish to speak of religiosity in
a spirit of serious praise. Some circuitous form, commending the
correctness of a man, περι τα θεια, _in respect of
divine things_, becomes requisite; for all the direct terms,
expressing the religious temper, are preoccupied by a taint of
scorn. The word όσιος, means _pious_,--not as regards
the gods, but as regards the dead; and even είσεβης, though
not used sneeringly, is a world short of our word 'religious.' This
condition of language we need not wonder at: the language of life
must naturally receive, as in a mirror, the realities of life.
Difficult it is to maintain a just equipoise in any moral habits,
but in none so much as in habits of religious demeanor under a Pagan
[that is, a degrading] religion. To be a coward, is base: to be a
sycophant, is base: but to be a sycophant in the service of cowardice,
is the perfection of baseness: and yet this was the brief analysis