Obviously, the importance and magnificence of the temple will react upon the popular conception of the importance and magnificence of the god who inhabits it. And conversely, as the gods grow greater and greater, more art and more constructive skill will constantly be devoted to the building and decoration of their permanent homes. Thus in Egypt the tomb was often more carefully built and splendidly decorated than the house; because the house was inhabited for a short time only, but the tomb for eternity. Moreover, as kings grew more powerful, they often adorned the temples of their ancestors with emulous pride, to show their own greatness. In Egypt, once more, the original part of all the more important temples is but a small dark cell, of early origin, to which one successive king after another in later dynasties added statelier and ever statelier antechambers or porches, so that at last the building assumed the gigantic size and noble proportions of Karnak and Luxor. This access of importance to the temple cannot have failed to add correspondingly to the dignity of the god; so that, as time went on, instead of the early kings being forgotten and no longer worshipped, they assumed ever greater and greater importance from the magnificence of the works in which their memory was enshrined. To the very end, the god depends largely on his house for impressiveness. How much did not Hellenic religion itself owe to the Parthenon and the temple of Olympian Zeus! How much does not Christianity itself owe to Lincoln and Durham, to Amiens and Chartres, to Milan and Pisa, to St. Mark’s and {070}St. Peter’s! Men cannot believe that the deities worshipped in such noble and dimly religious shrines were once human like themselves, compact of the same bodies, parts, and passions. Yet in the last instance at least we know the great works to be raised in honour of a single Lower Syrian peasant. With this brief and imperfect notice of the origin of temples, which will indirectly be expanded in later portions of my work, I pass on from the consideration of the sacred building itself to that of the Idol who usually dwells within it.