ed, and yet, we may
say, only half-humanised, retaining their purely physical nature, and
without any proper moral attribute at all, these gods and goddesses
remained to the many examples of sensuality made beautiful; and, as soon
as right and wrong came to have a meaning, it was impossible to worship
any more these idealised despisers of it. The human caprices and
passions which served at first to deepen the illusion, justly revenged
themselves; paganism became a lie, and perished.

In the meantime, the Jews (and perhaps some other nations, but the Jews
chiefly and principally) had been moving forward along a road wholly
different. Breaking early away from the gods of nature, they advanced
along the line of their moral consciousness; and leaving the nations to
study physics, philosophy, and art, they confined themselves to man and
to human life. Their theology grew up round the knowledge of good and
evil, and God, with them, was the supreme Lord of the world, who stood
towards man in the relation of a ruler and a judge. Holding such a
faith, to them the toleration of paganism was an impossibility; the laws
of nature might be many, but the law of conduct was one; there was one
law and one king; and the conditions under which he governed the world,
as embodied in the Decalogue or other similar code, were looked upon as
iron and inflexible certainties, unalterable revelations of the will of
an unalterable Being. So far there was little in common between this
process and the other; but it was identical with it in this one
important feature, that moral knowledge, like physical, admitted of
degrees; and the successive steps of it were only purchasable by
experience. The dispensation of the law, in the language of modern
theology, was not the dispensation of grace, and the nature of good and
evil disclosed itself slowly as men were able to comprehend it. Thus, no
system of law or articles of belief were or could be complete and
exhaustive for all time. Experience accumulates; new facts are observed,
new forces display themselves, and all such formulae must necessarily be
from period to period broken up and moulded afresh. And yet the steps
already gained are a treasure so sacred, so liable are they at all times
to be attacked by those lower and baser elements in our nature which it
is their business to hold in check, that the better part of mankind have
at all times practically regarded their creed as a sacred total to which