And not only is this forward-looking gaze of the Sibyl contrary to what we should have expected in such a changeless land of beauty and ease; it is also contrary to what we should have expected from the paganism of the people. It is characteristic of the Greek religion, as indeed of all heathen religions, that its golden age should be in the past. It instinctively clings to the memory of a former happier time, and shrinks from the unknown future. Its piety ever looks backward, and aspires to present safety or enjoyment by a faithful imitation of an imaginary past. It is always "returning on the old well-worn path to the paradise of its childhood," and contrasting the gloom that overhangs the present with the radiance that shone on the morning lands. In every crisis of terror or disaster it turns with unutterable yearnings to the tradition of the happy age. Or, if it does look forward to the future, it always pictures "the restoration of the old Saturnian reign"; it has no standard of future excellence or future blessedness to attain to, and no yearnings for consummation and perfection hereafter. The very name given to the south of Italy was Hesperia, the "Land of the Evening Star," as if in token of its exhausted history; and it was regarded as the scene of the fabled golden age from which Saturn and the ancient deities had been expelled by Jupiter. But contrary to this pagan instinct, the Cumaean Sibyl stretched forward to a distant heaven of her aspirations and hopes--to a nobler future of the world, not sentimental and idyllic, but epic and heroic. She pictured the blessing or restoration of this earth itself as distinct from an invisible world of happiness. And in this respect she is more in sympathy with the Jewish and Christian religions than with her own. The golden age of the Hebrews was in the future, and was connected with the coming of the Messiah, who should restore the kingdom again unto Israel. And the characteristic of the Christian religion is hope, the expectation of the times of the restitution of all things, and the realisation of the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." It is this hopeful element pervading them that gives to the lively oracles of Holy Scripture the triumphant tone which distinguishes them so markedly from the desponding spirit of all false religions, ancient and modern.