"And save in the fulfilment of their expectation, is the Jewish creed Christian?" asked Eugene. "As far as it goes it is; the Christian revelation is a fuller development of the old tradition, a clearer exposition of God; it destroys nothing of the past revelation, it fulfils and expands. The Jews were the preservers of the great tradition, transmitted through the patriarchs to Noah, and by him, through his sons, to the race it large. The tradition became corrupted by the majority; yet it is found in some form or other mixed up in all mythologies; and what deserves remark is, that the further back we trace mythology the purer it becomes. The early records of all nations tell us of purity, discipline, and sacrifice to secure purity of morals, and teach of justice after death, of good and evil spirits, and of the interference of the deity to check man in his career of evil. Men seem at first not so much to have denied the true God, as to have associated other gods with him, and to have changed their worship from seeking such spiritual union as would render them 'sons of God,' to adoration of the creator and upholder of physical power, physical grandeur, and physical beauty. Atheism, and the lowering of man's nature to that of a mere mortal animal, is an invention of modern times, and has for the most part only been held by men satiated, as it were, by a spurious civilization." "I am but little versed in the Bible," said Eugene, "but I have heard learned men assert that all the education, so to speak, of the Jewish nation was of a worldly character; and that though there are passages of Scripture containing allusions to the immortality of the soul, yet that doctrine was nowhere definitely asserted, but that, on the contrary, all the rewards and punishments promised, or threatened, were of a temporal nature."