spect of
their inherent meaning, as also of their origin and authority, rise
by the same ascending series of repeated birth,--like that at Delphi,
which, at first attributed to the Earth, then to Themis, daughter of
Earth and Heaven, was at last connected with the Sun and constituted one
of the richest gems in Apollo's diadem of light.

In the end we shall find that the whole world organizes about its centre
of Faith. Thus, under three different religious systems, Jerusalem,
Delphi, and Mecca were held to be each in its turn the _omphalos_ or
navel of the world. It follows inevitably that the _main_ movement of
the world must always be joyous and hopeful. By reason of this joy it is
that every religious system has its feast; and the sixth day--the day
of Iacchus--is the great day of the festival. The inscription which
rises above every other is "To the Saviour Gods."

We must look at history as a succession of triumphs from the beginning;
and each trophy that is erected outdoes in its magnificence all that
were ever erected before it. Nothing has suffered defeat, except as it
has run counter to the main movement of conquest. No system of faith,
therefore, can by any possibility pass away. Involved it may be in some
fuller system; its _material_ bases may be modified; its central source
become more central in the human heart, and so stronger in the world and
more immediate in its connection with the eternal; but the life itself
of the system must live forever and grow forever.

Still it is true that in the widest growth there is the largest
liability to weakness. "Thus it is," says Fouque, "with poor, though
richly endowed man. All lies within his power so long as action is at
rest within him; nothing is in his power the moment action has displayed
itself, even by the lifting-up of a finger on the immeasurable world."
In the very extent of the empire of an Alexander, a Caesar, or a
Tamerlane, rests the possibility of its rapid dissolution. At the
giddiest altitude of triumph it is that the brain grows dizziest
and there is revealed the deepest chasm of possible defeat; and the
conqueror,

"Having his ear full of his airy fame,"

is just then most likely to fall like Herod from his aerial pomp to the
very dust. This consciousness, revealing at the highest moment of joy
its utmost frailty, led the ancients to suspect the presence of some Ate
or Nemesis in all human triumphs. We all remember the king who threw his
s