"'Tis not merely The human being's pride that peoples space With life and mystical predominance, Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love This visible nature, and this common world Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import Lurks in the legend told my infant years That lies upon that truth, we live to learn. For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace; Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans, And spirits, and delightedly believes Divinities, being himself divine. The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of Old Religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty, That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms or wat'ry depths;--all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of Reason. But still the heart doth need a language; still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names." _The Piccolomini_, Act II. Scene 4. As a matter of fact we find the believers in the Greek religion more ready to receive Christianity than were the Jews. All through Asia Minor and Greece Christian churches were planted by Paul; a fact which shows that the ground was somehow prepared for Christianity. It was ready for the monotheism which Paul substituted for their multitude of gods, and for their idolatry and image-worship. The statues had ceased to be symbols, and the minds of the Greeks rested in the image itself. This idolatrous worship Paul condemned, and the people heard him willingly, as he called them up to a more spiritual worship. We think, therefore, that the Greek religion was a real preparation for Christianity. We have seen that it was itself in constant transition; the system of the poets passing into that of the artists, and that of the artists into that of the philosophers; so that the philosophic religion, in turn, was ready to change into a Christian monotheism.