Classical Theology.

her fascinating eyes disarmed her executioners ; and of another more famous and infamous , an old offender , who , even , after her crime was proved , by tearing open her garment at the bosom , not only stopped the sentence of the judge , but when such beauty pleaded her cause , all who were present acquitted her .

Like roses of the brightest and sweetest colours , love has its thorns ; and it leaves them hi the heart ; and the mind and the conscience are tormented and wounded by them . Venus has many names , for many nations worshipped her in some shape or form of a deity . Verticordia signifies the power which love has to change the heart and ease the mind of cares , as in the allusion of Ovid— .

" Templa jubet fieri Veneri , quibus ordine fact-is , Lrde Venus verso nomina corde tenet . " Which is seen still further exemplified in her Greek name E 7 rur-po < jitn . However , in the phases of poetry , Venus is all beauteous - . she is by turns the goddess of eloquence and elegance , as also of mirth and of the graces ; for she was born laughing , and it rained roses at

her birth ; her coronal is of roses ; her car is drawn b y swans and doves ; her smiles never want success ; she triumphs with her eyes ; and she draws her arrows from no other quiver . She can speak a language , that has an utterance , more impressive and impassioned than elocution ; with , a look she can conquer ; her subdued enemies fly rather to her than run from her ; and with invisible fetters , stronger

than iron , she binds her captives . No wonder then if men made idols of their passions and phantasies , and deified them in gold and silver , brass and stone , to an extent more in number than the stars of heaven—or that an adoration should have been offered to beauty . But it is to be comprehended how Venus herself was sought and reverenced and worshipped as a living power or divinity ? The

Judaical scriptures perhaps more largely inform one on this head than any other books ; while the Christian scriptures lead man from such , worshi p to his superior or regained immortality . In which is the putting down of idolothysia and image resemblance ( simulachrum ) as rank demonology . The votaries of Venus , who offered their vows and gifts at her shrinetrusted to gain her aid in their hates and jealousies and

, love affairs . It is well known that the shrines were thought to bo possessed of daemons that were under the control , more or less , of the priesthood ; and that they acted as media , where the priestess did not , of obtaining oracular responses . In which the house of Satan was not divided against itself .

LIFE THOUGHTS . —It is a joy to know that there is a realm where all those aspirations which have betokened us , only to crown ns still with thorns , shall be realized , and where there is no bud which shall fall without being filled into fruit . As prisonei' 3 in castles look out of their grated windows at the smiling landscape where the sun comes and goes , so we from this life , as from dungeon bars , look forth to the heavenly land , and are refreshed with sweet visions of the home that shall be ours when we are free , — Minor and Keystone ,