consuetudes as we do _Magna Charta_; reasonable people, in the long course of the centuries before Christ, would no more dream of disturbing the ancestral belief about the gods than they would think of influencing the settled courses of the stars. It was their very deep-rooted permanency, in the midst of the startling mutabilities to which human affairs are liable, that made the fundamental truths of religion so valuable to their souls; and as to the particular forms under which these fundamental truths might have been symbolised by venerable tradition, the people were not given to form themselves into hostile camps on the ground of any local difference, as we do in Scotland about ecclesiastical conceits and crotchets; and every devout Egyptian allowed his neighbour without offence to pay sacred honours to a crocodile or a cat, convinced that these honours were equally legitimate and equally beneficial whenever the sacred symbolism peculiar to the worship was wisely understood. Collisions, therefore, between Church and State, or between priesthood and kingship, such as signalised the medieval struggles of the Popes and Emperors, and the convulsions of our infant Protestant freedom in England, could not take place amongst the ancient polytheists. A wise Socrates was equally willing with the most superstitious devotee, when pious gratitude called, to sacrifice a cock to Æsculapius; and the νόμῳ πόλεως, by the custom of the State, was the direction which he gave to all who inquired of him by what rites they ought to worship the gods.[17] Only amongst the Hebrews, as a people in whose religious habitude polytheistic and monotheistic tendencies had never come to any decisive settlement of their inherent antagonism, do I find a record of a very serious collision between Church and State, after the fashion of our German Henries and Transalpine Hildebrands in the days of Papal aggression. Scotsmen familiar with their Bibles will easily see that I allude to the case of Uzziah, as recorded in 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-20:--"But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary; for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the Lord God. Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense: and while he was wroth with the priests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord, from beside the incense altar. And Azariah the chief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he was