recognized defenders? Seneca, indeed, and a few enlightened philosophers, might have taken refuge from the superstitions which they abandoned in a truer and purer form of faith. "Accordingly," says Lactantius, one of the Christian Fathers, "he has said many things like ourselves concerning God." [18] He utters what Tertullian finely calls "the testimony of A MIND NATURALLY CHRISTIAN." But, meanwhile, what became of the common multitude? They too, like their superiors, learnt to disbelieve or to question the power of the ancient deities; but, as the mind absolutely requires _some_ religion on which to rest, they gave their real devotion to all kinds of strange and foreign deities,--to Isis and Osiris, and the dog Anubus, to Chaldaean magicians, to Jewish exercisers, to Greek quacks, and to the wretched vagabond priests of Cybele, who infested all the streets with their Oriental dances and tinkling tambourines. The visitor to the ruins of Pompeii may still see in her temple the statue of Isis, through whose open lips the gaping worshippers heard the murmured answers they came to seek. No doubt they believed as firmly that the image spoke, as our forefathers believed that their miraculous Madonnas nodded and winked. But time has exposed the cheat. By the ruined shrine the worshipper may now see the secret steps by which the priest got to the back of the statue, and the pipe entering the back of its head through which he whispered the answers of the oracle. [Footnote 16: JUV. _Sat_. ii. 149. Cf. Sen. _Ep_. xxiv. "Nemo tam puer est at Cerberum timeat, et tenebras," &c.] [Footnote 17: Fragm. xxxiv.] [Footnote 18: Lactantius, _Divin. Inst_. i. 4.]