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dences of our world of hopes and fears?—in whom shall we put our trust, and to whom pray?—who are the unswerving vindicators of purity, of truth, of honesty? Are these Gods of the temples and the poets the all-pervading, the all-wise, the confidence of the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea?" Sophocles passed by on the other side, left the question untouched, as a thing not affecting the laws of conscience and the claims of duty, and testified that enough of the beautiful and the hopeful remained for him, enough of strength and encouragement in the assurance that all things still are working together for good. Only twice does a discordant note sound in his pages, when Hyllus appeals to men "not to forgive the Gods, seeing the mischief they do," and Philoctetes cries that "honouring the Gods, he finds the Gods base."^[1] Aeschylus proclaimed a Power that manifested itself in retribution, a God to whom vengeance belongeth: if, as in the Prometheus, he was confronted with an evil legend of the old Pantheon, he dashed himself against it in sullen indignation, pointing, as in scornful silence, to Zeus the usurper, the tyrant, the evil genius of humanity, the Doomed One.

While Sophocles believed and trusted, and Aeschylus believed and trembled, Euripides gazed steadily and fearlessly on the great veil hiding the unknown. "He fought his doubts and gathered strength; he would not make his judgment blind." Because the Gods of fable and poetry were impossible, he did not therefore deny the existence of Gods. To the scientific sceptic of his day he referred as one