condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I
am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.'

"Then said Evangelist, 'Why not willing to die, since this life is
attended with so many evils?' The man answered, 'Because I fear that
this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave, and
I shall fall into Tophet. And, Sir, if I be not fit to go to prison, I
am not fit to go to judgment, and from thence to execution; and the
thoughts of these things makes me cry.'

"Then said Evangelist, 'If this be thy condition, why standest thou
still?' He answered, 'Because I know not whither to go.' Then he gave
him a parchment roll, and there was written within, 'Fly from the wrath
to come.'"

The whole spirit of the passage transcribed, and of the book from which
it is quoted, is as alien as can be to the spirit of the Greeks. To the
Puritan, the inward relation of the soul to God is everything; to the
average Greek, one may say broadly, it was nothing; it would have been
at variance with his whole conception of the divine power. For the gods
of Greece were beings essentially like man, superior to him not in
spiritual nor even in moral attributes, but in outward gifts, such as
strength, beauty, and immortality. And as a consequence of this his
relations to them were not inward and spiritual, but external and
mechanical. In the midst of a crowd of deities, capricious and
conflicting in their wills, he had to find his way as best he could.
There was no knowing precisely what a god might want; there was no
knowing what he might be going to do. If a man fell into trouble, no
doubt he had offended somebody, but it was not so easy to say whom or
how; if he neglected the proper observances no doubt he would be