"Now, since thou hast, although so very small,
Science of arts so glorious, that I swear
(And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,
Witness between us what I promise here)
That I will lead thee to the Olympian hall,
Honored and mighty, with thy mother dear;
And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,
And even at the end will not deceive thee."
We might go through all the names of the mythology, and we shall still find that always the Grecian gods are some one elemental power of nature or of mind personified and worshipped by the people, in whom that power of mind, or around whom that power of nature, obtained. But Apollo was the manifestation of a Triune God. Apollo was never conceived, without a father to give him wisdom and the oracle, and without an object towards whom the activity of his love or hate is manifested.
This spiritual superiority of the Apollonic religion explains its predominance over all the other worships, which it finally swallowed up. Other oracles died out, even that of Dodonæan Jupiter; but Delphi ever became greater. This triumph of the religion of Apollo is a lesson to sectarian Christendom. It triumphed by tolerance; it conquered by accepting.
This fact is most remarkably displayed in its relations with the worship of Bacchus. Nothing could be more antipodal than the genius of these two worships. Bacchus concentrated the spirit of the earth-worships. His name and origin were Asiatic, and his worship had all the characteristics of Asiatic worship. It was the exciting, even to frenzy, of that elemental, mysterious, vital power, which is not idea, but seems its polar basis of life, the source of the substance that we are "without form, and void." The Asiatics always seem to regard this fury as divinity in its purest form. The Dorians opposed to Bacchus, Apollo, who, by the law which he is, arranges in order this blind force. Hence, the characteristic difference of Asiatic and Dorian worship. With the Asiatics, it consisted in a wild excitement of nervous energy, precluding all intellection and all reflection. The Bacchantes, as described by Euripides, could not see with their eyes what
