of Lord, one in whose service were fulfilled the words of
Isaiah: "I am the first and I am the last, and beside me there is no
God."

In the marvel of that miraculous realization were altitudes hitherto
undreamed, peaks from whose summits there was discernible but the
valleys beneath, and another height on which stood the Son of man. Yet
marvellous though the realization was, instead of diminishing, it
increased. It did not pass. It was not forgot. Ceaselessly it
augmented.

In the Scriptures there are many marvels. That perhaps is the
greatest. Amon, originally an obscure provincial god of Thebes, became
the supreme divinity of Egypt. Bel, originally a local god of Nippur,
became in Babylon Lord of Hosts. But Jahveh, originally the tutelary
god of squalid nomads, became the Deity of Christendom. The fact is
one that any scholarship must admit. It is the indisputable miracle of
the Bible.

VI

ZEUS

In Judea, when Jahveh was addressed, he answered, if at all, with a
thunderclap. Since then he has ceased to reply. Zeus was more
complaisant. One might enter with him into the intimacy of the
infinite. The father of the Graces, the Muses, the Hours, it was
natural that he should be debonair. But he had other children. Among
them were Litai, the Prayers. In the _Vedas_, where Zeus was born, the
Prayers upheld the skies. Lame and less lofty in Greece, they could
but listen and intercede.

The detail is taken from Homer. In his Ionian Pentateuch is the
statement that beggars are sent by Zeus, that whoever stretches a hand
is respectable in his eyes, that the mendicant who is repulsed may
perhaps be a god[37]--suggestions which, afterward, were superiorly
resumed in the dictum: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

[Footnote 37: Odyssey, xviii. 485, v. 447, xiv. 56.]

The Litai were not alone in their offices. There were the oracles of
Delphi, of Trophonios and of Mopsos, where one might converse with any
divinity, even with Pan, who was a very great god. But Olympos was
neighbourly. It was charming too. There was unending spring there,
eternal youth, immortal beauty, the harmonies of divine honey-moons,
the ideal in a golden dream; a stretch of crystal parapets, from
which, leaning and laughing, radiant goddesses and resplendent gods
looked down, and to whom a people, adolescent still, looked up.

In that morning of delight fear was absent, mystery was