496 THE DEAD GODS. 



architects of Egypt began their work, there was another 

 polar star in the northern sky, and the Southern Cross 

 shone upon the Baltic shores. How glorious are the 

 memories of those ancient men, whose names are for- 

 gotten, for they lived and laboured in the distant 

 and unwritten past. Too great to be known, they sit 

 on the height of centuries and look down on fame. 

 The boat expands its white and pointed wings ; the 

 sailors chaunt a plaintive song ; the waters bubble 

 around us as we glide past the tombs and temples of 

 the by-gone days. The men are dead, and the gods 

 are dead. Nought but their memories remain. Where 

 now is Osiris, who came . down upon earth out of love 

 for men, who was killed by the malice of the Evil 

 One, who rose again from the grave, and became the 

 Judge of the dead ? Where now is Isis the mother, 

 with the child Horus on her lap ? They are dead ; 

 they are gone to the land of the shades. To- 

 morrow, Jehovah, you and your son shall be with 

 them. 



Men die, and the ideas which they call gods die too; 

 yet death is not destruction, but only a kind of change. 

 Those strange ethereal secretions of the brain, those 

 wondrously distilled thoughts of ours — do they ever 

 really die ? they are embodied into words ; and from 

 these words, spoken or written, new thoughts are born 

 within the brains of those who listen or who read. 

 There was a town named Heliopolis ; it had a college 

 garden, and a willow hanging over the Fountain of 

 the Sun ; and there the Professors lectured and dis- 

 coursed on the Triune God, and the creation of the 

 world, and the Serpent Evil, and the Tree of Life ; 

 and on chaos and darkness, and the shining stars; and 

 there the stone quadrant was pointed to the heavens ; 



