Page:God and His Book.djvu/171

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GOD AND HIS BOOK.
161

gravestones that call you God. And the wedded love of the mothers of our race for more than a thousand years has been, in your name, consecrated at the altar, and the fruits of their love in baptism offered to you. And yet we must desert you, O God, even as we deserted other deities to worship you.

"In the vast cemetery, called the Past, are most of the religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all their gods. The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and cornice, over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden: Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked with his three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon; but Memnon is as voiceless as the sphinx. The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by the priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously-sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle and none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still….. The gods have flown from the high Olympus……Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are the voices of the prophets, and the land once flowing with milk and honey is but a desert waste. One by one the myths have faded and the phantom host has disappeared; and, one by open, facts, truths, and realities have taken their places. The supernatural has almost