tiles and Jews; and the latter have been compelled by the stern laws of logic to convert the sand into demons, in order to account for spiritual phenomena which could not, in harmony with the principles of their law, be ascribed to the Rock. But a little more and better logic, had they been permitted to use it, would have taught them that without the Infinitely many the Eternal One is imperfect; nor could Polytheism ever have had an existence as a Providential Establishment, if it had not contained an elemental, a vital and eternal truth. The omnipresence of God is merely another word for his Polytheistic Unity. As the whole of the Divine consciousness, wisdom and efficiency in action must be in every portion of space at once, and as he must have the faculty of subdividing his attention infinitely (that is, of giving a separate and simultaneous attention to an infinite number of things), what else can this be but an infinite multiplicity of individualities in the infinite and eternal universality? In this we perceive the absolute and the free in the Divine Nature-the Male and the Female Principles, from which the unity and the infinite variety of creation are derived. The Gentiles received the one aspect of truth, and the Jews the other. But neither as yet have received both, or are able to reconcile the idea of unity with the fact of diversity. But the deepest and the sublimest truths were taught in pro-logical mystery from the beginning, like riddles propounded, but not expounded; and therefore, we are told at the very

opening of the Book, that man was made in the image of God, male and female; and before it closes, we are also told by Micah, the Hebrew Prophet, that in the days of universal peace and glory, the day of restitution of all things, every people shall walk in the name of its own God, and Israel in the name of their God; for that which was is, and shall be for ever, only translated or modified, and there can be no vital unity without diversity. Hence the Divine mission of both Monotheism and Polytheism but neither has yet solved the Problem. The antagonism lasts until the final reconciliation. Victory there cannot be, for each is victorious: "Charity believeth all things."

SCENE SEVENTH.

WOMEN AND SLAVES.

Greece was invested with a mission of Liberty, and Liberty is a feminine principle. But there is a graduated scale of Liberty, and the last note must not be expected at the beginning of the gamut. It is only at the end of the Drama of Generation and the Fall, that the full realisation of Liberty can take place; and then we shall find its perfect analogue in the social and domestic, moral and intellectual status of woman. In the progress of the Drama we can only discover a gradual eleva

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tion of the Female Sex in the favourable, and a greater degradation in the unfavourable, aspect of woman's history; for the history of both sexes represents a cross, a rise and a fall, a progressive and a retrogressive movement, indicating the regular decline of an old phasis of being, and the growth of a new.

Under the Jewish economy woman holds a very inferior place. The morning prayer of the male Jews, for every day in the week, over all the world, contains these remarkable words:-"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the world, because thou hast given the cock knowledge to distinguish between day and night-because thou hast not made me a gentile-because thou hast not made me a slave because thou hast not made me a woman. A Jew might discharge his wife as he would a servant, merely by giving her a letter of divorce-a get; and so easy was this that Rabbi Simeon says, "All documents written by day and signed at night are void, except letters of divorce;" and these may be written, if only with indelible ink, on anything; on a leaf, or a cow's horn, or the cow itself, or even on a slave's hand; only the article on which the letter is written becomes, of course, the lady's property. A Jew might have as many wives as he pleased, and make wives of all the servant girls in his house, without giving any just cause for his wife to complain; repressing all her inward feelings of disgust and discontentment by the fear of a get

if she dared to remonstrate.

In such a state of

society woman must have been thoroughly subdued. Accordingly she makes no figure whatever in Jewish history. Even the Spirit rarely visited her as a prophetess, and she could not be a priestess; and not one of the Scriptures is written by a woman. It was an ultramasculine dispensation, the Law of Moses a bearded system in which the woman was as a rib not yet extracted. Had it been otherwise, the law of analogy would have been violated.

In the next act of the Drama woman makes a step in advance. She becomes at least a wife, a prophetess, and a priestess. The Greeks rejected polygamy, and sanctified the idea of marriage, as well as of the female sex. The Greek had a home and a family circle, and his wife had at least the satisfaction of knowing that she could not have a legitimate rival in her own house. However, there was little security for the Greek wife remaining a wife. Her husband could divorce her with little trouble, but it was very difficult for her to divorce him. She was little better than a hired housekeeper, who bore legitimate children to her master. When dismissed, she returned to her father. The greatest hold she had upon her husband, in the absence of his love, was her dowry or her children. Without a dowry, children, or conjugal love, there was no hope for her. A Greek could have dismissed his wife, as a Jew would, without public scandal to himself, if she brought him no offspring.

In such a state of matrimonial relation, bisexual society, like that which peculiarly distinguishes the modern from the ancient world, could have no existence. Society was male only. The men had their clubs, as Englishmen have theirs. Eranoi they were called, and consisted of every variety of association-convivial, mutual benefit, political, artistic, or merely pic-nic, as humour or circumstances happened to dictate; and in such associations they had their symposia, or feasts, from which married women and maids were invariably excluded. When a man gave a banquet in his own house to his friends, it was to his male friends only, for he was supposed to have none other; and his wife and daughters might help to provide the feast, but could only partake of the remnants that came from the table. An Athenian woman was under bondage from birth till death. She had always a Kurios

a lord-either in a father or a husband, or when these failed, her nearest male kinsman, who could dispose of her in marriage in spite of herself. A man might even bequeath his wife by will to his friend. The mother of Demosthenes was left by will to Aphobus, with a portion of eighty minas ; and he has preserved the form of such a will in one of his speeches. The wife is there enumerated amongst other property, and has only the privilege of coming first in the list; walking over before the horses and cows, pigs and poultry, from the house of her old to that of her new master.