“Gods, partial, changeful, profligate, unjust, Whose attributes were _rage_, _revenge_, and _lust_.” This, of course, will be set down for rank blasphemy against the canons of taste. We are exuberant in our praises of the _genius_ of Homer, and not to worship his _inventive_ powers is an offence of the deepest dye; but when we are barbarous enough to critically examine this wonderful mythology, and to determine the claims to applause—say of supreme Jove—we are rather troubled by the difficulty of reconciling the ways of the first intelligence with our commonplace notions of decency. The intrigues of the father of the gods, the artifices by which he eludes the jealousy of his wife Juno, his incestuous, and, if they were not classical, we should call them filthy debaucheries, draw largely upon our faith in the beauties of these records of high Olympus; and our admiration for the poet is sadly tinctured with disgust for the images in which his creative powers are developed. Thus much of the ceremonial laws. Of the moral law, the law of God, it becomes me not to speak; its obligations are as eternal as its author; the everlasting truths of the decalogue have been incorporated more or less into every system of religion and ethics which has been enunciated during the ages interposing between us and the period in which they were first promulgated on Mount Sinai. In dismissing Moses and his times, I crave your particular attention to the manner in which the characters of priest and physician met in the same person. As we proceed we shall find that this junction of attributes continues through all the variations of time and circumstances. The terrors of the _unseen_, overawing the ignorant, placed them at the mercy of those daring minds which in every age have assumed the office of interpreters of the will of the _demon_, or the behests of the benign Deity. To deal as a mediator between the threats of the terrible avenger and the awe-stricken victim of his own bewildered imagination, to avert the consequences of the threatened storm, or to turn aside any other manifestation of approaching evil is the office of the _medicine-man_ of the North American Indian and the _Obeah_ doctor of the African. Shrewd observers of nature, these wretched impostors monopolize the whole of the intelligence, such as it is, of the hordes of the human race upon whom the light of reason has never dawned, or has dawned in vain.