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repast, hut took Tantalus and fixed him in the midst of the waves, where he is tormented nevertheless with a thirst which he cannot allay.

If we shall credit some expositors, this fable repre- sents the condition of a miser, who, in the midst of plenty, is in continual want. But Ovid declares that the crime of Tantalus was discovering the secrets of the gods to men.

This is the old story repeated,—the elevation of man to too much knowledge; and the "punishment" is that, in the midst of Deity and truth, he thirsts forever after the ocean which he cannot compass. As soon as man discovers the infinite about him,—as soon as he knows so much as that he knows nothing of first principles—the secrets of the gods, the thirst after the knowledge of life begins: and it must endure while only God is perfect in intelligence and power. Tantalus will never die, nor will Prometheus be unbound.

But older and profounder than Tantalus or Prometheus is the fable proper of the Fall of Man, though the substance is much the same. The stolen light from heaven, and the box of evils consequent thereon,—and the stolen fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the thorns and thistles consequent thereon, bespeak a common purpose and a common origin. The substance of the supposed original lies between the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis and the last of chapter third.

"And out o£ the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food: the tree of life also, in the midst of the

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