of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.  In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored.  No god ever dies.  Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined.  Men reverence one another, not yet God.  If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much.  They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.  Every people have gods to suit their circumstances; the Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu, “in shape like a dog; he saved such as were in danger of falling from rocks and trees.”  I think that we can do without him, as we have not much climbing to do.  Among them a man could make himself a god out of a piece of wood in a few minutes, which would frighten him out of his wits.

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old school, who had the supreme felicity to be born in “days that tried men’s souls,” hearing this, may say with Nestor, another of the old school, “But you are younger than I. For time was when I conversed with greater men than you.  For not at any time have I seen such men, nor shall see them, as Perithous, and Dryas, and poimena la_on,” that is probably Washington, sole “Shepherd of the People.”  And when Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or seemed to roll, and now for the seventh time shows his face in the east, eyes wellnigh glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated only between lamb’s wool and worsted, explore ceaselessly some good sermon book.  For six days shalt thou labor and do all thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth, thy reading.  Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they toil, not without a feeling of gratitude; whose life is as blameless, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord’s Mona-day as on his Suna-day.

There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them?  What man believes, God believes.  Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough.  Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?

One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this era,—­the Christian fable.  With what pains, and tears, and blood these centuries have woven this and added it to the mythology of mankind.  The new Prometheus.  With what miraculous consent, and patience, and persistency has this mythus been stamped on the memory of the race!  It would seem as if it were in the progress of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his stead.