Page:Afterglow; pastels of Greek Egypt, 69 B.C. (IA afterglowpastels00buck).pdf/12

8 as a kind of gilt on the gingerbread of lechery; but nobody took the gods seriously. Such, we are apt to think, was Paganism.

It was nothing of the kind; that is, in the heroic age of Greece, certainly not in the age when Socrates, about to drink the hemlock, discoursed to his disciples of immortal life in the essence of the Godhead. They were no flowery and careless voluptuaries who listened to certain rituals of predestination that have survived to our days. We can read in them still of the doom that awaits proud and insolent men, owning no master in heaven or earth; of the manner in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation; of the vengeance that lies in wait for the spiller of blood; of the remorseless decrees of destiny; and of making atonement for transgression. Such are the topics of these sermons and