The ancient worshipers of the gods had lost all but the name, _power_ and relation, which they ever knew of Jehovah. And they could do no more than clothe Jupiter with their own imperfections and impurities—and then place him above all the gods; it was necessary for them to view him as excelling in all the characteristics of the secondary gods. And having attributed to the gods all they knew of human passions and corruptions, they clothed Jupiter himself with more villainy and corruption than belonged to any other god. In this was the great blasphemous sacrilege of ancient idolatry. They thus demonstrated their own apostacy; and the fact that their system of gods was a counterfeit, a mythical system. They were destitute of any standard of right and wrong, having no conceptions of the divine character which were not drawn from their own imperfect and corrupt lives. The divine character, as revealed in the revelation of Christ, and presented to us as God manifest in the flesh, is at once the very opposite of the characters given in the myths. The distance between the two is the distance between the lowest degradation of God-like power exercised in the lowest passions, and the sublimity of Heaven’s own spotless life. I love the religion of the Scriptures, because it restores to the race the lost knowledge of God and the additional life of Jesus—the only perfect model known in the history of the race. It is the life of God manifested in the flesh; make it _your own_, and it will save you. Mr. English, an American infidel, said: “Far be it from me to reproach the meek and compassionate, the amiable Jesus, or to attribute to him the mischiefs occasioned by his followers.” It is now conceded that Jesus Christ was _no myth_ by all the great minds in unbelief. He lived. We love his life, because all who would rob Him of His authority are compelled to speak well of it. Rousseau, another infidel, says: “It is impossible that he whose history the gospel records can be but a man,” adding, “Does he speak in the tone of an enthusiast, or of an ambitious sectary? What mildness! What purity in his manners! What touching favor in his instructions! What elevation in his maxims! What presence of mind! What ingenuity, and what justice in his answers! What government of his passions! What prejudice, blindness or ill faith must that be which dares to compare Socrates with the Son of Mary!