demonstrated by the facility with which they had been overthrown.
The triumphant ecclesiastics proclaimed that the images of the
gods had failed to defend themselves when the time of trial came.

Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the
southern European races, the Semitic have maintained the unity of
God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has
suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys,
islands, and rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a
multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable
ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God.

Political reasons had led the emperors to look with favor on the
admixture of Christianity and paganism, and doubtless by this
means the bitterness of the rivalry between those antagonists was
somewhat abated. The heaven of the popular, the fashionable
Christianity was the old Olympus, from which the venerable Greek
divinities had been removed. There, on a great white throne, sat
God the Father, on his right the Son, and then the blessed
Virgin, clad in a golden robe, and "covered with various female
adornments;" on the left sat God the Holy Ghost. Surrounding
these thrones were hosts of angels with their harps. The vast
expanse beyond was filled with tables, seated at which the happy
spirits of the just enjoyed a perpetual banquet.

If, satisfied with this picture of happiness, illiterate persons
never inquired how the details of such a heaven were carried out,
or how much pleasure there could be in the ennui of such an
eternally unchanging, unmoving scene, it was not so with the
intelligent. As we are soon to see, there were among the higher