And again, in order to appreciate the unlikelihood that such a tradition as that of the sabbath would long survive the severance from Divine Revelation in this wintry world, we have only to consider how rapidly it is forgotten, in our own time, by Christians in heathen lands, or by those Christian settlers who are severed for the time at least from civilization, and whose energies are absorbed in a ceaseless conflict with the yet untamed powers of nature.
SECT. III.
The inventive Element of the Homeric Theo-mythology.
I come now to that mass of Homeric deities, who are either wholly mythological, or so loaded with mythological features, that their traditive character is depressed, and of secondary importance.
Jupiter.
The character of Jupiter, which commonly occupies the first place in discussions of the Greek mythology, has been in some degree forestalled by our prior examination of the position of other figures in the system, which are both more interesting and more important, from their bearing more significant resemblances to and traces of the truth of Divine Revelation.
Nevertheless, this character will well repay attention. To be understood and appreciated, it must be viewed in a great variety of aspects. When so viewed, it will be found to range from the sublime down to the brutal, and almost even down to the ridiculous. Upon the whole, when we consider that the image which we thus bring before us was during so many ages, for such multitudes of the most remarkable portion of mankind, the chief representative of Godhead, it must leave a deep impression of pain and melancholy on the mind.
‘If thou beest He; but Oh! how fall’n, how changed!’
The Jupiter of Homer is to be regarded in these four distinct capacities: