rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that it
obviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuaded
that it has it--that death is but a puppet king, and love the master of
the universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but a
faltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it.

For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemies
of love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracian
women, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, stand
for the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. They
but repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of the
forfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, of
selfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far as
love can be slain.

In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek creation in the form of one
of the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and ideal
aspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout the
story; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning against
paganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mighty
contrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganism
enters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle was
fought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, for
all the world to see. The two things which give their character to the
centuries from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man for
immortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On the
smaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand to
the end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus.

It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet
singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of
Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or
Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its
greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim
the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for
the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which
professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought
of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who
derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance