Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 32--Legends of the Gods.pdf/124

 prolific, she brought men and women together and gave them offspring, she was the authoress of all love, virtue, goodness and happiness. She made the light to shine, she was the spirit of the Dog-star which heralded the Nile-flood, she was the source of the power in the beneficent light of the moon; and finally she took the dead to her bosom and gave them peace, and introduced them to a life of immortality and happiness similar to that which she had bestowed upon Osiris.

The message of the cult of Isis as preached by her priests was one of hope and happiness, and coming to the Greeks and Romans, as it did, at a time when men were weary of their national cults, and when the speculations of the philosophers carried no weight with the general public, the people everywhere welcomed it with the greatest enthusiasm. From Egypt it was carried to the Islands of Greece and to the mainland, to Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal, and then crossing the western end of the Mediterranean it entered North Africa, and with Carthage as a centre spread east and west along the coast. Wherever the cult of Isis came men accepted it as something which supplied what they thought to be lacking in their native cults; rich and poor, gentle and simple, all welcomed it, and the philosopher as well as the ignorant man rejoiced in the hope of a future life which it gave to them. Its Egyptian origin caused it to be regarded with the profoundest interest, and its priests were most careful to make the temples of Isis quite different