deformity could quench, Apollo acknowledges by service of Pluto. His own superior divinity is manifested, in that he never ceases to act and assert himself, under whatever penalty.
Let the self-righteous of modern time, who may not learn of Christ, meditate this lesson promulgated in Greece, and which was one of the formative or creative principles of the Dorian culture and character. The Greeks dared to look the prime difficulty, the great mystery of life, in the face, and reverently to bow before it. It is good for man to shun evil and do good; nay, it is incumbent on him to resist evil. But he must pay the penalty of contact. The Greek was inspired by Apollo to go up man-like, and act, with eyes wide open to the expiation that was to follow; and which, in its turn, he also suffered man-like, without subterfuge or meaching. There are amongst us a people of sickly morality, who never do any thing—for fear of doing wrong.
"O God! forgive our crimes:
Forgive our virtues too, those lesser crimes,
Half converts to the right!"
Apollo may teach such, who will not listen to the same lesson given by Christ, in a form so sublime that its meaning is not dreamed of by thousands who pride themselves on the name of Christian, but do not understand as much of the doctrine as is expressed by the Dorian Apollo. Life is antagonism; action and re-action. Will you not act, for fear of the re-action? You can then choose but to die, or what is worse,—life in death. The Muses will never follow you.
But the Dorian religion was not a mere symbolic representation, an acknowledged theory of the difficulty of life. It was eminently practical. It enjoined on all its votaries personal culture. These people were pious. Their god was in all their thoughts. They lived upon the oracle. It was to them a living guidance, and wise were its utterances. Indeed, all wisdom was included prophetically in the motto on the temple of Delphi. A temple of Apollo, which was a
