saints; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation
more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and
clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has
once learned to believe.

In all mythologies, the trait of all others which most commonly
occurs, is that of the descent of the Gods to earth, where, in human
form, they mix among mortals, and occupy themselves with their
affairs, either out of a spirit of adventure, or to try the hearts of
men. Such a conception is shocking to the Christian notion of the
omnipotence and omnipresence of God, but we question if there be not
times when the most pious and perfect Christian may not find comfort
and relief from a fallacy which was a matter of faith in less
enlightened creeds, and over which the apostle, writing to the
Hebrews, throws the sanction of his authority, so far as angels are
concerned. [Heb., xiii, 1: 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not
forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained
angels unawares.']

Nor could he have forgotten those words of the men of Lystra, 'The
Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men'; and how they called
'Barnabas Jupiter', and himself Mercury, 'because he was the chief
speaker.' Classical mythology is full of such stories. These
wanderings of the Gods are mentioned in the Odyssey, and the sanctity
of the rites of hospitality, and the dread of turning a stranger from
the door, took its origin from a fear lest the wayfaring man should
be a Divinity in disguise. According to the Greek story, Orion owed
his birth to the fact that the childless Hyrieus, his reputed father,
had once received unawares Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes, or, to call
them by their Latin names, Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury. In the