'There ought to be none,' Probus replied. 'It ought to be a source of innocent pleasure, if not of wholesome instruction, to gaze upon the imitated form of a good man--of a reformer, a benefactor, a prophet. But man is so prone to religion,--it is an honorable instinct--that you can scarce place before him an object of reverence but he will straightway worship it. What were your gods but once men, first revered, then worshipped, and now their stone images deemed to be the very gods themselves? Thus the original idea--the effect, we may believe, of an early revelation--of one supreme Deity has been almost lost out of the world. Let the figure of Christ be everywhere set before the people in stone or metal, and, what with the natural tendency of the mind to idolatry, and the force of example in the common religion, I fear it would not be long before he, whom we now revere as a prophet, would soon be worshipped as a god; and the disciples whom you have named, in like manner, would no longer be remembered with gratitude and affection as those who devoted their lives to the service of their fellow-men, but be adored as inferior Deities, like your Castor and Pollux. I can conceive that, in the lapse of ages, men shall be so redeemed from the gross conceptions that now inthrall them concerning both God and his worship, and so nourished up to a divine strength by the power of truth, they shall be in no danger from such sources; but shall reap all the pleasure and advantage which can be derived from beautiful forms of art and the representation of great and excellent characters, without ever dreaming that any other than the infinite and invisible Spirit of the universe is to be worshipped, or held divine. The religion of Christ will itself, if aught can do it, bring about such a period.' 'That then will be the time for artists to live, next after now,' said Demetrius of Palmyra. 'In the meantime, Probus, if Hellenism should decline and die, and your strict faith take its place, art will decline and perish. We live chiefly by the gods and their worship.' 'If our religion,' replied Probus, 'should suffer injury from its own professors, in the way it has, for a century or two more, it will give occupation enough to artists. Its corruptions will do the same for you that the reign of absolute and perfect truth would.' 'The gods then grant that the corruptions you speak of may come in season, before I die. I am tired of Jupiters, Mercurys, and Apollos. I have a great fancy to make a statue of Christ. Brother! what think you, should I reach it? Most excellent Probus, should I make you such an one for your private apartments I do not believe you would worship it, and doubtless it would afford you pleasure. If you will leave a commission for such a work, it shall be set about so soon as this god of the Emperor's is safe on his pedestal. What think you?'