Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/86

Rh over the ocean; Jove over the land and sky. One divinity wakes the olive and the corn, another has charge of the vine. One guides the day from his chariot with golden wheels. A sister Deity walks in brightness through the nocturnal sky. A fountain in the shade, a brook leaping down the hills, or curling through the plains; a mountain walled with savage rocks; a sequestered vale fringed with romantic trees,—each was the residence of a God. Demons dwelt in dark caves, and shook the woods at night with hideous rout, breaking even the cedars. They sat on the rocks—fair virgins above the water, but hideous shapes below—to decoy sailors to their destruction. The mysterious sounds of Nature, the religious music of the wind playing among the pines at eventide, or stirring the hot palm tree at noonday, was the melody of the God of sounds. A beautiful form of man or woman was a shrine of God. The storms had a deity. Witches rode the rack of night. A God offended roused nations to war, or drove Ulysses over many lands. A pestilence, drought, famine, inundation, an army of locusts was the special work of a God.