Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/57

Rh in contemplating these glorious creations we experience that indescribable content which invariably comes over the soul, when, by any agency, we are lifted above the limitations of the finite and phenomenal into the region of eternal truth.

Grand and beautiful as are the classic gods, they nevertheless fail to touch the deepest springs of human feeling. Though invested with the attributes of humanity, we feel that in their emancipation from the sorrows and sufferings incident to our mortal life they are not true exponents of human nature, while as symbols of Deity they are inadequate to shadow forth the one infinite and eternal mind. From their cold though perfect beauty, the heart of suffering humanity turns to the thorn-crowned figure of the Son of Man, and recognizes in the man of sorrows its true type and representative.

By revealing God as a spirit immanent in the human soul, imparting authority to the oracles of conscience, and sanctity to the inner life, Christianity has dispersed the crowd of heathen divinities, and exalted to the throne of the universe a Heavenly Father whose glory is reflected in the Son of Man. Christ's realization of conscious union between the divine and human spirit, wrought out through the discipline of sorrow, and issuing in perfect love, has revealed a depth of spiritual life of which in the profoundest myths of classical antiquity we see only a dim but most wonderful foreshadowing.

The transition from the classical to the romantic era