We cannot see too clearly that the great problem of life, in Philosophy, Art, or Religion, is essentially the same from the beginning.  Like Nature, indeed, it repeats itself under various external phases, in different ages and under different skies.  History whispers from her antediluvian lips of a race of giants; so does the earth reveal mammoths and stupendous forests.  But the wonder neither of Man nor of Nature was greater then than now.  We say much, too, of Progress.  But the progress does not consist in a change of the fundamental problem of the race; we have only learned to use our material so that we effect our changes more readily, and write our record with a finer touch and in clearer outline.  The progress is in the facility and elaboration, and may be measured in Space and Time; but the Ideal is ever the same and immeasurable.  Homer is hard to read; but when once you have read him you have read all poetry.  Or suppose that Orpheus, instead of striving with his mythic brother Cheiron, were to engage in a musical contest with Mozart, and you, reader? were to adjudge the prize.  Undoubtedly you would give the palm to Mozart.  Not that Mozart is the better musician; the difficulty is all in your ear, my friend.  If you could only hear the nice vibrations of the “golden shell,” you might reverse your decision.

So in Religion; the central idea, if you can only discern it, is ever the same.  She no longer, indeed, looks with the bewildered gaze of her childhood to the mountains and rivers, to the sun, moon, and stars, for aid.  In the fulness of time the veil is rent in twain, and she looks beyond with a clearer eye to the surer signs that are visible of her unspeakable glory.  But the longing of her heart is ever the same.

What remains to us of ancient systems of faith is, for the most part, mere name and shadow.  It is even more difficult for us to realize to ourselves a single ceremony of Grecian worship,—­for instance, a dance in honor of Apollo,—­in its subtile meaning, than it would be to appreciate the “Prometheus” of AEschylus.  This ignorance leads oftentimes to the most shocking profanation; and from mere lack of vision we ridicule much that should call forth our reverence.

Thus many Christian writers have sought to throw ridicule upon the Eleusinia.  But we must remember, that, to Greece, throughout her whole history, they presented a well-defined system of faith,—­that, essentially, they even served the function of a church by their inherent idea of divine discipline and purification and the hope which they ever held out of future resurrection and glory.  Why, then, you ask, if they were so pure and full of meaning, why was not such a man as Socrates one of the Initiated?  The reason, reader, was simply this:  What the Eleusinia furnished to Greece, that Socrates furnished to himself.  That man who could stand stock-still a whole day, lost in silent contemplation, what was the need to him of the Eleusinian veil?  The most self-sufficient