“Speak on,” replied Athenæus, with his usual courtesy; “I shall be delighted to satisfy you to the best of my power.”
“Are we to believe the stories that are told us in this book?” and he held up, as he spoke, a little volume of popular mythology, filled from beginning to end [pg 99]with tales that, to say the least, were not edifying. “For, if these be true, these divine beings were such as would be banished from the society of all honest men and women. They are thieves, adulterers, murderers. It would be a thousand times better to have no gods at all than such as these.”
“You are right, sir,” said the lecturer; “these stories are for the ignorant only, at least in their outward meaning, though they have an inner meaning also, which I will take some fitting occasion to expound. But not such are the gods whom we worship.”
“Will you tell us something of them?” continued the questioner.
“Willingly, for they are such that the wisest of men need not be ashamed of them. They dwell in some remote region, serene and happy. Wrath they feel not, nor sorrow, nor any of the passions that disturb the souls of men.”
“And do they care for our doings upon earth?”
“How so? They neither love nor hate; and both they must do, I take it, did they concern themselves with human affairs.”
“What profit, then, is there in them? How are men the better for their being?”
“That I know not; only that it is part of the order of things that they must be.”
“Far be it from me,” exclaimed the young Jew, “to exchange for such idle existences the God of my [pg 100]fathers! He may smite us in His anger till we are well-nigh consumed, but at least He cares for us. He led our fathers through the sea and through the wilderness in the days of old. He has spoken to us by the prophets, and He has made His Presence to be seen in His Temple; and though He has hidden His face from us for a time, yet He will repent Him of His wrath, and devise the means by which He shall recall His banished unto Him. No, we will not change our God for yours!”