Does not Varro, one of the most honoured of Roman writers, distinguish carefully between the mythology of poets, the religion of the commonwealth, and the beliefs of philosophers? It is true that he deprecated the revelation of these truths to the multitude, because there is no way to keep them in order but by illusions. Yet scarcely an old woman or beardless boy in Rome really believes in these fables; and it is a good thing that they do not. If they attached genuine credence to the supposed deeds of this rabble of gods, they would have patrons and examples of every lust and of every crime. But they are dimly aware that Stator, Liber, Hercules, Mercury, are but names or manifestations of one Divine Existence. The mysteries are divulged; the oracles are dumb; and as the wailing spirits cried to Epitherses thirty years ago as he sailed past the promontory of Paludes, “Great Pan is dead.”[67] ‘A person, then, who can regard it as criminal to reject the popular belief must be ignorant of all philosophy and all literature. Is any one bound to suppose that there really is such a god as Panic; or such goddesses as Muta, Febris, and Strenia? Are the Greek poets to be condemned who have repeatedly spoken of one God? God is everywhere. He is that without which nothing is. He comes to men; He comes into men. No one is good without God. Pomponia’s character alone is sufficient to prove that there is nothing harmful in her belief. To the God who is near us, to the sacred Spirit who dwells with us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good, she has been supremely true. The image of the gods cannot be formed with gold and silver, or such materials, but with the beauty and dignity of human souls. God is best worshipped, not by sacrifices of bulls, but by innocence and rectitude.