Indeed, is it not true that whatsoever is most sensuous in connection with human joy, and at the same time pure, is the very flower of life, and therefore the most consummate revelation of holiness?  Nothing in Nature is so intensely solemn as her summer, in its infinite fulness of growth and the unmeasured altitude of its heavens.  And within the range of human associations which shall we select as revealing the most profound solemnity?  Surely not the sight of the funeral train, nor of the urn crowned with cypress,—­of nothing which is associated with death or weakness in any shape;—­but the sight of gayest festivals, or the paraphernalia of palace-halls,—­the vision of some youthful maiden of transcendent beauty crowned with an orange-wreath, within hearing of marriage-bells and the whisperings of holy love,—­or the aspirations of the dance and the endless breathings of triumphant music.  These are they which come up most prominently in remembrance,—­even as the whole race, in its remembrances, instinctively looks back to the Orient,—­to some Homeric island of the morning, where are the palaces, the choral dances, and the risings of the sun.[e] And as Memory has the power to purify the past of all material grossness, Faith has the same power as regards the present Hence, the closest connection of religious faith with the most joyous festivals, with a finely moulded Venus or Apollo, with an Ephesian temple or a splendid cathedral, or the sweetest symphonies of music, does not mar, but reveals its natural beauty and strength.

[Footnote e:  Odyssey, xii., 4.]

But most certainly the Greeks gave a profound spiritual meaning to the Eleusinia, as also to the mystic connection of Demeter with Dionysus.  She gave them bread:  but they never forgot that she gave them the bread of life.  “She gave us,” says the ancient Isocrates, “two gifts that are the most excellent:  fruits, that we might not live like beasts; and that initiation, those who have part in which have sweeter hope,—­both as regards the close of life, and for all eternity.”  So Dionysus gave them wine, not only to lighten the cares of life, but as a token, moreover, of efficient deliverance from the fear of death, and of the higher joy which he would give them in some happier world.  And thus it is, that, from the earliest times and in all the world, bread and wine have been symbols of sacramental significance.

Human life so elevates all things with its exaltation and clothes them with its glory, that nothing vain, nothing trifling, can be found within its range.  He who opposes himself to a single fact thus of necessity opposes himself to the whole onward and upward current, and must fall.  We have heard of Thor, who with his magic mallet and his two celestial comrades went to Joetunheim in quest of adventures:  and we remember the goblet which he could not exhaust because of its mysterious connection with the inexhaustible Sea; the race with Hugi, which in the end proved to be