We have spoken of two distinct classes of gods; the gloomy deities which belong to the sphere of conscience and moral responsibility, and the cheerful gods of the natural world. This distinction is a just one, but it must not be confounded with another. According to the old mythologies, before Jove became king of heaven, and all the young gods, Apollo and the rest, took their places by his side, the throne of Olympus had been filled by an older race of deities—Cronus, and Oceanus, and Prometheus, and the Titans—who had been exiled at the fall of their dynasty, or bound in prisons and tortures. About these there was something venerable from their age, and something mysterious from the slightness of the knowledge possessed about them. They were therefore favourite subjects with Æschylus, as we shall see in his "Prometheus." But their darkness and mystery was of a different kind from that of Atè and Erinnys.
What, then, in this strange medley is true and permanent? The brightness of the natural world—this is our first and greatest lesson from the Greeks; the deep, dreadful responsibility of man; the possibility of restoration from sin to purity; the overruling providence of a supreme Creator. We shall enjoy Æschylus more if we trace these truths in his poems, and we shall learn how much was good in the pagan creeds, instead of only being disgusted by their falsehood.
