First, then, as to the CULTUS, or form of the national worship:--In our Christian ritual I recognise these separate acts; viz. A, an act of Praise; B, an act of Thanksgiving; C, an act of Confession; D, an act of Prayer. In A, we commemorate with adoration the _general_ perfections of the Deity. There, all of us have an equal interest. In B, we commemorate with thankfulness those special qualities of the Deity, or those special manifestations of them, by which we, the individual worshippers, have recently benefited. In C, by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we pray, or ask for the things which we need. Now, in the _cultus_ of the ancient pagans, B and C (the second act and the third) were wanting altogether. No thanksgiving ever ascended, on his own account, from the lips of an individual; and the state thanksgiving for a triumph of the national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously publishing the news. As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say that this was wanting, when I mention that penitential feelings were unknown amongst the ancients, and had no name; for _pœnitentia_[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word for repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian use. _Metanoia_, however, is not that word: it is grossly to defeat the profound meaning of the New Testament, if John the Baptist is translated as though summoning the world to _repentance_; it was not _that_ to which he summoned them.] means _regret_, not _penitence_; and _me pœnitet hujus facti_, means, 'I rue this act in its consequences,' not 'I repent of this act for its moral nature.' A and D, the first act and the last, _appear_ to be present; but are so most imperfectly. When 'God is praised aright,' praised by means of such deeds or such attributes as express a divine nature, we recognise one great function of a national worship,--not otherwise. This, however, we must overlook and pardon, as being a fault essential to the religion: the poor creatures did the best they could to praise their god, lying under the curse of gods so thoroughly depraved. But in D, the case is different. Strictly speaking, the ancients never prayed; and it may be doubted whether D approaches so near to what _we_ mean by prayer, as even by a mockery. You read of _preces_, of αραι, &c. and you are desirous to believe that pagan supplications were not _always_ corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, in thinking of nations idolatrous yet noble, that never _any_ pure act of approach to the heavens took place on the part of man; that _always_ the intercourse was corrupt; _always_ doubly corrupt; that eternally the god was bought, and the votary was sold. Oh, weariness of man's spirit before that unresting mercenariness in high places, which neither, when his race clamored for justice, nor when it languished for pity, would listen without hire! How gladly would man turn away from his false rapacious divinities to the godlike human heart, that so often would yield pardon _before_