laiming him
an infidel for turning a deaf ear to its imprecations. Mankind was
never so happy as under his guidance; and he has nothing now to do but
to put down the battles of the gods. If they must fight it out, he
will insist on our neutrality.

_Timotheus._ He has no authority and no influence over us in matters
of faith. A wise and upright man, whose serious thoughts lead him
forward to religion, will never be turned aside from it by any worldly
consideration or any human force.

_Lucian._ True: but mankind is composed not entirely of the upright
and the wise. I suspect that we may find some, here and there, who are
rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of temples; and I have
observed that new sects are apt to warp, crack, and split, under the
heat they generate. Our homely old religion has run into fewer
quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and Lapiths (whose controversy was
on a subject quite comprehensible), than yours has engendered in
twenty years.

_Timotheus._ We shall obviate that inconvenience by electing a supreme
Pontiff to decide all differences. It has been seriously thought about
long ago: and latterly we have been making out an ideal series down to
the present day, in order that our successors in the ministry may have
stepping-stones up to the fountain-head. At first the disseminators of
our doctrines were equal in their commission; we do not approve of
this any longer, for reasons of our own.

_Lucian._ You may shut, one after another, all our other temples, but,
I plainly see, you will never shut the temple of Janus. The Roman
Empire will never lose its pugnacious character while your sect
exists. The only danger is, lest the fever rage internally and consume
the vitals. If you sincerely wish your religion to be long-lived,
maintain in it the spirit of its constitution, and keep it patient,
humble, abstemious, domestic, and zealous only in the services of
humanity. Whenever the higher of your priesthood shall attain the
riches they are aiming at, the people will envy their possessions and
revolt from their impostures. Do not let them seize upon the palace,
and shove their God again into the manger.

_Timotheus._ Lucian! Lucian! I call this impiety.

_Lucian._ So do I, and shudder at its consequences. Caverns which at
first look inviting, the roof at the aperture green with overhanging
ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with native gems and with
water as sparkling and pellucid,