it on his own finger, rejoined the shepherds, his companions. By turning the stone of the ring towards the palm of his hand, he found that he became invisible to others, yet saw everything distinctly, and that, by returning it to its proper place, he became again visible. By this means he was enabled to accomplish whatever he pleased; and, having, with the assistance of the queen, whom he had seduced, killed the king, his master, he became, in a short time, king himself. "Now, had this ring," Cicero observes, "been in possession of a wise man, he would not, on that account, have thought himself more at liberty to commit a bad action; for good men consider only the character of their actions, and not the possibility of concealing them."

Yet Cicero, after all, was no other than a reasoning philosopher; the Sun of Righteousness was not yet risen. God manifest in the flesh, for the merciful purpose of saving a fallen world, was a mystery which remained to be unfolded. The gods of the heathen were, indeed, gods calculated to inspire terror; revengeful, lustful, and in every respect the reverse of that God of love who teaches us to do to others as we would that they should do to us. "The deep meditations of Socrates never resulted in his calling together the Athenians and proposing. to them to educate the poor, or free the slaves. The groves of Academus never heard Plato make a speech in favour of ragged schools. There is not extant in all the writings of Pagan authors one passage from which it could be inferred that these talking Peripatetics ever imagined such a thing as that the poor should be cared for."*

* Sermon by the Rev. T. R. Everest.

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," was the natural expression of the minds of men who either were in doubt respecting a future life, or whose gods were the representatives of human passions.

It is matter of authentic history that, during the celebration of the feasts instituted in honour of Bacchus, whilst some were contending for the prize of poetry, others, who were initiated into the celebration of the peculiar rites, represented, some Silenus, others Pan, others Satyrs; and in this manner appeared in public, night and day, counterfeiting drunkenness, dancing obscenely, and committing all kinds of licentiousness and debauchery. Even Plato himself pronounced drunkenness to be venial during the Bacchanalian Carnival.

At the very period when philosophy was at its highest pitch in Greece, the ribaldry of Aristophanes was more than a match for the chaste and imperishable lessons of the greatest, in general estimation, of the uninspired sons of men. Nothing, in fact, can more clearly show that ridicule is not a legitimate test of truth, than the popular triumph which Aristophanes achieved over Socrates in his "Comedy of the Clouds." Neither was it without reason that the elder Cato was warmly opposed, in the early part of his career, to the introduction of Grecian literature and manners among the Romans, since we find that so little did their introduction tend to keep the moral atmosphere of Rome pure, that the study of philosophy was never more zealously cultivated than at the time when Catullus did not blush to declare that, in the composition of his verses, the poet need not trouble himself either about their purity or their piety.

So completely, in fact, was the religion of the lower orders subservient to the grossest superstition, and so necessary was this deemed to be to the safety of the State, that even Socrates, when charged with the introduction of novel opinions, dared not admit, but, on the contrary, indignantly repudiated the accusation, as unworthy of him, and as of the gravest and most momentous importance.

Whatever reason, therefore, there may be for supposing that Plato and his followers inclined to the belief of the being of a God, and of a future state; yet this belief was so beset with metaphysical subtleties, and drawn from so unfathomable a depth of thought, as to render it totally inapplicable to the lower orders of society; a state of things which can be readily apprehended by us who see how the same classes are dealt with in Roman Catholic countries at the present day.

In taking the most liberal view of the case, it must be acknowledged that the consciences of men, of superior intellectual endowment and learning, have been too easily betrayed into the adoption of esoteric and exoteric doctrines, epithets of equivocating import, the former of which is applied to opinions sincerely entertained, the latter to such as are simply considered expedient, from their exercising a politic influence on others, who are to be held in subjection, not by reason and truth, but by the force of infallible authority, or of blind and irresistible superstition. The more the writings of the most enlightened heathens are studied, the more evident it becomes that their metaphysics were purely conjectural, and that their utmost degree of assent to

the doctrine of a future state, in connection with the being of a God, went no further than to a greater or less degree of probability, according to the dogmas of this or that particular sect or master. Such was

We

but too evidently the character, when we examine it closely, even of Cicero's religious creed; for, however strong he appears when contending for the divinity of the Socratic doctrines, we find him faltering the moment his faith is put to any trial of its stability. It neither afforded him consolation in grief or sickness, nor shielded him from the fear of death. When his daughter Tulliola, the darling of his heart, was taken from him, he seems to have received no consolation whatever from his condoling friends; the letters that passed between them afford the clearest evidence that they regarded death as final, and not as the door to a happier and more enduring state of existence. have still more conclusive evidence of the unsteadiness of his faith in his pleading before the populace for A. Cluentius, wherein he unhesitatingly declares that the very worst of men have nothing to fear hereafter. "What," he demands, "will be gained by a sentence of death? Unless indeed we give in to those fables and anilities which would have it to be believed that the wicked will undergo punishment in the infernal regions. And, if these are mere bugbears, as all sensible men think, what more does death effect, than the extinction of all sense of pain ?”* And how similar to the above are the sentiments which Sallust has recorded as having

*Pro A. Cluentio. Sect. 61.

been expressed by Cæsar in the senate! "Mortem cuncta mortalium mala dissolvere; ultrà neque curæ neque gaudio locum esse.'

The utmost lenity, in fact, that can be shown to Cicero's opinions, on the score of consistency, must fail of rescuing them from that tormenting quality of doubt which unassisted reason is incapable of overcoming. After reciting the opinions of others respecting the soul of man, and its extinction, he adds, "Harum sentiarum, quæ vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit. Quæ verisimillima, magna quæstio est." Elsewhere he "Nescio quo modo dum lego, assentior; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cæpi cogitare, assensio omnis illa elabitur."‡

says,

But can we be surprised at the vacillations of Cicero's own mind, when we read, that even Socrates, whose unflinching firmness he had so extolled, and who was pronounced by the Oracle of Apollo to be the wisest of the sons of men, when the hour was at hand at which the expectation of a future life might, it was fair to suppose, have sustained his spirit, could cheer his surrounding friends with nothing more encouraging than the following, which have been committed to posterity as the last words he spoke :—

66 'Αλλὰ γὰρ ἤδη ὥρα ἀπίεναι, ἐμοι μὲν, ἀποθανουμένω ὐμῖν δὲ βιωσομένοις. οποτεροι δὲ ἡμῶν ἔρχονται ἑπὶ ἄμεινον πραγμα, ἄδηλον παντὶ πλὴν ἤ τῶ θεῶ.”

"We are now about to part-I to death, you to life. Which has the advantage, is known to God only."

Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. Sect. 2.

* Sallust. Catal. C.

Apolog. ad finem.