So austere was the rule, by which those mysteries were protected, that Æschylus but barely escaped discerption within the theatre, for an imagined disrespect to their tendency. Nor was it but on the plea of ignorance and un-initiation, that he did ultimately obtain pardon.[352]
This insuperable barrier to the curiosity of the profane, engendered in their conduct a corresponding reaction, and, as the fox did to the grapes, what they could not themselves compass, they strove all they could to vituperate!
“Virtue, however, is its own reward,” and, as the authority of Cicero, having been himself a priest, ought to have some weight in the discussion, it is no small impetus to the cause of truth, to hear this pre-eminent man assign to the efficacy of the precepts, inculcated in those mysteries,—“the knowledge of the God of nature; the first, the supreme, the intellectual; by which men had been reclaimed from rudeness and barbarism, to elegance and refinement; and been taught, not only to live with more comfort, but to die with better hopes.”[353]
“Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God;
Pursues that chain which links the immense design,
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine,
Sees that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above, and some below;
Learns from this union of the rising whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end in love of God and love of man.”[354]
CHAPTER XXII.
I would have my reader pause upon the substance of the terms with which the last section concluded—“Not only to live with more comfort, but to die with better hopes!”
Have you read them? Have you digested them? And are you not ashamed of your illiberality?
From what pulpit in Christendom will you hear better or more orthodox truths? Where will you find the Gospel more energetically enunciated? And, with this testimony staring you in the face—in defiance of inner light—and imperiously subjugating the allegiance of rationality—will you still persist in limiting the benevolence of your “Father?” and in withholding every symptom of paternal regard from his own handiwork, until the beginning of the last two thousand years? that is, as it were, till yesterday?