in or not, so long
as it entirely occupied the thoughts. The scholar of the sixteenth
century, if he saw the lightning shining from the east unto the west,
thought forthwith of Jupiter, not of the coming of the Son of Man; if he
saw the moon walking in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the
throne which was to be established for ever as a faithful witness in
heaven; and though his heart was but secretly enticed, yet thus he
denied the God that is above.[25]

And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity confessed and Paganism
beloved, was worse than Paganism itself, inasmuch as it refused
effective and practical belief altogether. It would have been better to
have worshipped Diana and Jupiter at once, than to have gone on through
the whole of life naming one God, imagining another, and dreading none.
Better, a thousandfold, to have been "a Pagan suckled in some creed
outworn," than to have stood by the great sea of Eternity and seen no
God walking on its waves, no heavenly world on its horizon.

Sec. CII. This fatal result of an enthusiasm for classical literature was
hastened and heightened by the misdirection of the powers of art. The
imagination of the age was actively set to realize these objects of
Pagan belief; and all the most exalted faculties of man, which, up to
that period, had been employed in the service of Faith, were now
transferred to the service of Fiction. The invention which had formerly
been both sanctified and strengthened by laboring under the command of
settled intention, and on the ground of assured belief, had now the
reins laid upon its neck by passion, and all ground of fact cut from
beneath its feet; and the imagination which formerly had helped men to
apprehend the truth, now tempted them to believe a falsehood. The
faculties themselves wasted away in their own treason; one by one they
fell in the potter's field; and the Raphael who seemed sent and inspired
from heaven that he might paint Apostles and Prophets, sank at once into
powerlessness at the feet of Apollo and the Muses.

Sec. CIII. But this was not all. The habit of using the greatest gifts of
imagination upon fictitious subjects, of course destroyed the honor and
value of the same imagination used in the cause of truth. Exactly in the
proportion in which Jupiters and Mercuries were embodied and believed,
in that proportion Virgins and Angels were disembodied and disbelieved.
The images summoned by art began gradually to as