earthquake or hurricane, vast and fatal desert, or frowning mountain; but by its pleasing diversity it stimulated, without overwhelming, his soul. That portion of the Aryans that, upon their migration from the old Bactrian home, reached the shores of the Ægean, found there a land that fostered still more these traits. Here nature was picturesque and diversified, without the stupendous magnitudes that overawe the soul. Above him, the sky was bluest of the blue. The marble hills formed continual pictures. The streams rippled cheerily down their songful beds. The wavelets chased each other playfully in the light zephyrs. All the aspects of earth and sea and sky were bright and gladsome, and conspired to stimulate the imagination of the Greek.

Hellenic religion came thus, by right, to be a happy and luxuriant faith, full of pretty fancies, putting man at ease with the divine, and personifying the gods under the most familiar and graceful shapes : "Sunbeams upon distant hill,

Gliding apace with shadows in their train,

Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet oreads, sporting visibly."

The wind was fancied a divine harper, who makes music in the tree-tops, and drives the flocks of the sun-the fleecy clouds-where he wills. The murmuring spring was imaged as a gentle nymph; and within each fine tree was an imprisoned dryad. In short, the diversified and charming scenery supplied an unequaled wealth of religious and mythic lore. And, as man, in this climate, exempt from the debilitating heats of the tropics and the stunting of too severe cold, reached the ideal of bodily perfection, the human form became, not unnaturally, to the Greek, the noblest type under which he could represent the divine. The gods were humanized-stronger and more beautiful beings, to be sure, than ordinary men, but possessed of the same forms, members, and passions.

The course which the Norsemen took when they, in their turn, went forth from the common Aryan home, was less propitious. It led them to a land where the summer was short and the sun soon had to wage a bitter and losing war for long months with frost and snow; a land where the fiords were heavily sealed with ice, and man had a bitter task to keep the wolf of starvation and death from his door. The sternness and gloom of the land were reflected in the Northman's thought and faith. Woden, the stormful, Thor, the thunderer, and Loki, the vengeful and cunning destroyer, become the chief figures in his myths. The interest centers in the struggles of the Aesir, the deities of light and beneficence, against the frost-giants and their allies or servants-the midgard-serpent, the fenris-wolf, and the dreaded Hel-varied personifications of darkness, cold, and death.

Delighting himself, as the Norseman did, in the vigorous exercise and the hearty feasting, to which the frosty air stimulated, his gods

likewise were boisterous and stalwart beings, riding on the tempest, amusing themselves by feats of strength, reveling in the crash of battle, and gathering the fallen heroes into the bright Valhalla, there to reward them for their courage with foaming cups of mead, and the barbaric delights of ceaseless combats, in indestructible bodies. Thus, instead of the Graces and the beautiful Apollo of Greece, we find in Scandinavia deities as blustering and uncouth as the Northland itself, but manly and good-hearted. While in Greece the primitive Aryan faith takes on a more æsthetic and refined aspect, in Germany and Scandinavia it becomes more tragic and intense.

Let us follow next the steps of that part of the Aryans who turned their steps southward into the languorous plains of India, and we shall see a different change. The first thing we notice is, that Dyans—the shining one, the bright sky of day-loses his ancient pre-eminence. His supremacy in the thoughts of the Aryan emigrants is first taken by Varuna-the night-sky. In the hot clime of India, the bright sky of day was no longer so pleasant to them, and Varuna seemed a kinder deity, and therefore became more popular. But soon he also is superseded by Indra, the rain-god, who, with his glittering lance-the lightning-pierces and releases the imprisoned waters. For in India, then, as to-day, the coming of the rainy season after the long drought is by far the most important of all nature's changes. It was not long before Indra, therefore, by his terrible might and his beneficent prowess in slaying the drought-serpent, became, with his coadjutors, the Maruts, the beating winds, the chief object of Vedic adoration. And soon we notice an equally significant change. The vigorous Aryan, in the debilitating heats of the Indian plains, became a victim of lassitude. He lost his healthful delight in the good things of sense and earth. The languid air lulled him in dreamy reveries. Meditation takes the place of service in the commandments of religion; and asceticism, instead of the divine blessings, becomes the pious practice. So great and so rapid is the change that comes over their faith that, before many centuries have passed, pessimistic views of life become so seated in the race that the illusiveness of the world and the essential wretchedness of life become cardinal doctrines of faith; and the great desire of men's heart's is not for renewed lease of life, but for the means of obtaining exemption from the misery of rebirth. And so it has been with other nations and races. The physical characteristics of the countries they have dwelt in have powerfully modified the aspect of their religion. The races inhabiting the most barren and unfavorable quarters of the globe-such as the Patagonians, Hottentots, Kamschatkans have suffered correspondingly in their possibility of religious progress. Conversely, it is that intermediate zone between the tropical and the temperate-the land of the olive, the fig, and the orange— where the mean temperature is not lower than 60° Fahr. nor more than 75° Fahr., that has been the home of the great founders of re

ligions-Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, and Christ. Moreover, we may notice, as Peschel has pointed out, the suggestive fact that it is in the wide expanses and awe-inspiring solitudes of the desert, where the imagination, while vividly excited, is yet not distracted and divided among the manifold wonders of nature-shimmering leaf and gnarled trunks, writhing mists and rattling thunder, and the weird sounds of forest or sea-beach-that suggest and develop the polytheistic gods, but can give itself up entirely to the impressions of a single Majesty and Infinity—it is, I say, amid these noble yet simple aspects of nature, that the great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, have been originated. It was at Sinai that Moses promulgated his stern prohibitions of idolatry and polytheism. It was by a Bedouin foster-mother that Mohammed was reared, and as a shepherd and caravan-merchant, traveling across the Arabian deserts, that he passed his early life. And it was in the desert that Christ listened to the preaching of John the Baptist, and passed the forty days in which he prepared himself for his great career.

2. In the second place, we must notice, as of equal if not greater influence in giving diversity to religious faith, man's experiences with himself and with his fellows. It is an old maxim that it is "in the experiences of life that each individual finds or loses his god." Starting on the lowest range of the soul's experience, we notice the effect of the dreams, trances, swoons, ecstasies, and other abnormal phenomena of human nature, in giving direction and variety to religious conceptions. While I regard it as a grave error to derive religion solely from these morbid phenomena, nevertheless they have undoubtedly done much in awakening the spiritual powers of man, and in giving shape to his religious instincts. Life, in its most familiar and natural phases, is a mysterious thing-a wonder which doubtless filled the primitive man with ill-understood awe, as it has made even the pride of modern science stand abashed before it. And its more eccentric and exceptional aspects would especially set men to marveling, and suggest explanations which we may to-day laugh at, but without really having penetrated into the heart of the mystery any more than our remotest ancestors. Thus, among almost all peoples the shadow has been looked upon as a second self, and as one of the causes if not the cause of life. The breath, likewise, with whose cessation life ends, has been especially identified with the soul, the principle of life, as is shown by the same or similar words employed in most languages, as their names-atman in Sanskrit ; nephesh and ruach among the Hebrews; wang among the Australians; anemos and anima in Greek and Latin-indicate. As in dreams the savage seems to see his distant kinsmen, to visit remote localities, to behold again the long-dead parent or grandparent; so he comes to believe that the soul, an impalpable form within the fleshly organism, is capable of leaving the body when it pleases, of taking long journeys and flashing with incredible

swiftness from place to place, of possessing its will and consciousness independently of the body, and continuing to exist and appear after the death of the body.

This conception of the soul once formed, the abnormal facts of disease, insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria, come readily to be explained by the invasion into these bodies of other spirits than their own-celestial or demoniac, superhuman or infra-human, according to the phenomena observed. These notions, once diffused, give rise, in their turn, to a whole cycle of kindred animistic theories and religious practicessuch as divination by dreams, exorcisms of demons, dervish-dancings, and other artificially produced swoons and ecstasies, and fetichistic magic of all sorts. Sneezing, hiccough, and all painful diseases, are to the savage the work of some spirit that has crept into his body. Fasting, as occasioning vivid visions, becomes a method of seeing one's tutelar deity, as among our Indians, or as the proper rite to fit the priest for initiation into his sacred office, as generally in savage tribes.

When it is evil spirits that do their work in man, they must be cast out by invoking some beneficent and more powerful god. Hence exorcism, witchcraft, medicine-men. When it is good spirits that do their work in man, we have inspired seers and priestesses-divine oracles, like those of Delphi and Dodona. Out of a belief that the spirits of the dead still maintain an interest in those they have left, and are causers of good and evil to them, come propitiation of them by gifts and prayers, and ancestor-worship-so prevalent in ancient China, Egypt, and Rome, as among many African and Polynesian tribes still-is developed.

Next, perhaps (as happens in many cases), the departed chieftain or patriarch, still looked upon as protecting his descendants and tribesmen, becomes the guardian deity of the tribe, or the ruler of the hidden land to which the ghosts of the dead must journey. As still further evolutions from this root, we find the belief in the resurrection of the body and the transmigration of souls, the custom of embalming, and the varied ideas of the nature of the future life found in different nations.

3. Next, we must notice the great influence of man's intercourse with his fellows. Under this third head I would call attention to the action of the political condition or environment, as a differentiating factor. In ancient times, the connection between religion and government was far closer than we see almost anywhere to-day. That separation between church and state, that independence of politics and faith so prevalent every where to-day, was unknown to antiquity. The state and the church were one. The king was high-priest by virtue of his office, and the priest as much a state or civic official as judge or warrior-chief. Not infrequently, the same individual held both what we now distinguish as secular and sacred offices. Among the ancient Aryans-as with the early Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans-religion

was a domestic rite. Each home had its altar and its sacred fire, whose flame must never be allowed to go out. And so the word hestia or vesta-the fixed place for the family hearth-fire-came to represent the divine mother, the guardian of the family, who, if duly honored, would preserve it in honor and prosperity. It was the office of the father or grandfather, the living head of the family, to pour on the sacred flame the offerings of meal and butter, to offer the incense and pour out the libations, and to salute with prayer and praise the beneficent god of light, at his morning rising; or when, by neglect properly to feed the deity of the hearth, the god had left them, it was the duty of the father to bring him back, by the friction of the sacred sticks.

As families increased to tribes, and tribes were consolidated, the chief of the tribe, the patriarch of the community became, of course, the proper officer to perform the religious rites for the greater social body; as was the case in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, and is still the case in China to-day. The gods were conceived of as belonging to and concerned only with the tribe or nation that worshiped them; often, indeed, were imagined inseparable from a particular land; and he who went away from it was beyond the protection of his accustomed gods.

Thus David, in his well-known appeal (1 Samuel, xxvi, 19), says to Saul, If men have stirred thee up against me, they are cursed, for they have driven me out this day from dwelling in Jehovah's heritage, saying to me, Go, serve other gods. The idea that all lands might be under the care of one god, and the people of different nations might be of one religion, was a conception slow in arising. Whoever belonged to a tribe or nation was bound to worship the gods of that nation. When a man was adopted into a nation, or a woman married into another gens or tribe, such a person was held to adopt the divinities and tutelar deities of their new companions also. The promise of Ruth to Naomi, "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God," was not an exceptional but a necessary conjunction. To disown or ignore the gods of one's fathers was to disown one's nationality.

Conversely, the god of a special people must protect and favor his own. In the historical books of the Old Testament, e. g., we see many times appearing the idea that Jehovah's honor is so bound up with that of his people that he could not neglect to protect and bless them, no matter how great his wrath against their trespasses. The existence of foreign gods was not at all disbelieved, nor their power denied. But they were looked upon as naturally confining their favors to their own land and people. It was proper that their own people should worship them, but to foreigners they would be indifferent or hostile. To introduce strange gods into the state was therefore a dangerous experiment, entailing the risk of alienating their rightful divine protectors.