“One source of fable,” says an able writer, “is the perversion or alteration of facts in sacred history; and indeed this is its earliest and principal source. The family of Noah, perfectly instructed by him in religious matters, preserved for a considerable time the worship of the true God in all its purity. But when the members of this family were separated and scattered over different countries, diversity of language and abode was soon followed by a change of worship. Truth, which had hitherto been intrusted to the single channel of oral communication, subject to a thousand variations, and which had not yet become fixed by the use of writing, that surer guardian of facts, became obscured by an infinite number of fables which greatly increased the darkness that had enveloped it.”
The advantages of an acquaintance with mythology are many. They have been admirably shown by Rollin, from whom we quote:
1. It apprises us how much we are indebted to Jesus Christ the Savior, who had rescued us from the power of darkness and introduced us into the wonderful light of the Gospel. Before his time what was the real character of men? Even the wisest and most upright men—those celebrated philosophers, those great politicians, those renowned legislators of Greece, those grave senators of Rome? In a word, what were all the nations of the world, the most polished and the most enlightened? Fable informs us they were the blind worshipers of some demon, and bowed the knee before gods of gold, silver and marble. They offered incense and prayers to statues, deaf and mute. They recognized as gods animals, reptiles, and even plants. They did not blush to adore an adulterous Mars, a prostituted Venus, an incestuous Juno, a Jupiter blackened by every kind of crime, and worthy for that reason to hold the first rank among the gods. See what our fathers were, and what we ourselves should have been, had not the light of the Gospel dissipated our darkness! Each story in fable, every circumstance in the life of the gods, ought at once to fill us with confusion, admiration and gratitude.
2. Another advantage from the study of fable is that, by discovering to us the absurd ceremonies and impious maxims of paganism, it may inspire us with new respect for the majesty of the Christian religion, and for the sanctity of its morals. Ecclesiastical history informs us that a Christian bishop (Theophilus of Alexandria), to render idolatry odious in the minds of the faithful, brought forth to the light and exposed to the eyes of the public, all which was found in the interior of a temple that had been demolished; bones of men, limbs of infants immolated to demons, and many other vestiges of the sacrilegious worship which pagans render to their deities. This is nearly the effect which the study of fable must produce on the mind of every sensible person; and this is the use to which it has been put by the holy fathers and all the defenders of the Christian religion. The great work of St. Augustin, entitled “The City of God,” which has conferred such honor upon the Church, is at the same time a proof of what I now advance, and a perfect model of the manner in which profane studies ought to be sanctified.
3. Still another benefit of great importance may be realized in the understanding of authors either in Greek, Latin, or even French, in reading which a person is often stopped short if ignorant of mythology. I speak now of the poets, merely, whose natural language is fable; it is often employed also by orators, and it furnishes them frequently with the happiest illustrations, and with strains the most sprightly and eloquent.
4. There is another class of works whose meaning and beauty are illustrated by a knowledge of fable, viz., paintings, coins, statues, and the like. These are so many enigmas to persons ignorant of mythology, which is often the only key to their interpretation.
TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE;
Or, THE POISON PROBLEM.
BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.