cipal attribute of this goddess was wisdom, and she is represented as springing from the head of Jove. The idea of ordinary generation seems entirely inadmissible in reference to her. It can not fail to strike every one what a counterpart this conception of Minerva is to the "Wisdom" of the Jews, which represented the divine side of the Messiah's person, and was identical with, and reproduced in the Logos, or Word of St. John. The original Messianic tradition must, of course, have had a double aspect, as the Messiah was contemplated in His divine nature alone, or in His incarnation. The tradition of the Messiah as the incarnate God had at last, in the heathen world, taken the form of Apollo; that of the Wisdom, or Logos, or Word, which before it was made flesh was with God, and was God, had taken the form of Minerva, and through these forms the most glorious truth ever made known still retained some hold upon the minds of men.

But it is necessary, in order to establish these points more perfectly, to ascertain how

these Messianic traditions and these remnants of a great primeval revelation could have found their way into Greece. If we can gain any light on this subject, it would help to corroborate, by the results of secular investigation, the great truths which we desire to prove. This will lead us to a brief consideration of the origin of the inhabitants of Greece, and of the various migrations by which the country was settled. There were in the heroic age, as we have seen, two classes of inhabitants in Greece the Pelasgian and the Hellenic. It is clear, and admitted by all the best philologists and ethnologists, that they both belong to the same race, but came into Greece at widely separated times; the Pelasgi, eighteen hundred or two thousand years B.C., the Hellenes from thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred years B.C. The derivation of the Hellenic tribes from the East is clearly evident, and there seems to be good reason for tracing them to Persia. This alone would lead us to the conclusion that the Pelasgi, being of the same race, were of Eastern origin also; but

there is other and conclusive evidence of this. There are indications, before what are regarded as historical times, of three great migrations from the East. In the earliest times we find the Turanian race overspreading Western Asia and Northern and Central Europe. Then we have another wave of migration in the great Indo-European race, which, it is probable, was developed out of the Turanian race, and which seems to have spread in two directions, at least, pressing upon its Turanian predecessors. One stream seems to have flowed into Northern, and the other into Central and Southern Europe, through Asia Minor. In this migration the Pelasgi are to be found, who were probably the first settlers in Italy and Greece. There is no little reason for supposing that the point from which these migrations proceeded was Central Asia, and near the Hindoo Koosh The names applied by the Pelasgic tribes to mountains and rivers and cities, wherever they settled, all point back to just this quarter of the world. Previous to the fifteenth century before our era,

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the Aryan branch of the Indo-European race was settled on the Upper Indus, and a great migration eastward and westward took place. The one is commemorated in the Rig Veda, the other in the Zendavesta. If the Hellenes are of Persian origin, as there seems good reason to suppose, they are to be referred to this migration. We have not considered the development of the Semitic family, for that did not contribute especially to the population of Greece. All the evidence that is accessible on this point is favorable to this conclusion: that the Pelasgi and the Hellenes were of one race; that they were of Eastern origin; that that part of their religious system which was common to both and peculiar to neither was of immemorial antiquity, and came, as it were, from the very source of the race. Now this part of their system is just that which is so immeasurably superior to the other, and has such striking points of similarity to the Jewish traditions of the Messiah. That these facts point back to an expectation, prevailing in the earliest ages of the world, of the future

coming of a divine person in a human form, who should be a Deliverer from evil and a Conqueror of death, and that this expectation gave its character and direction to a vast deal of heathen mythology, we hold to be among those things which it is folly to deny.

We have merely glanced at this subject, and have not even referred to an immense body of evidence, in regard to it, to be found in Homer alone. Much may also be found apparently inconsistent with these views, but the facts still remain to be accounted for, if that is possible, on any more reasonable hypothesis.

But to conclude, we find the poems of Homer just at a time when we can best catch from them, as it were, the direction of human history. A process of corruption in religion and morals is evidently going on, but some of the great truths of the traditional religion are still clear and distinct, and exercise a powerful influence over the morals of the age. A civilization has arisen which has received such vitality, under favoring circumstances, from