There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in this
conception. If there were, it would attach equally to the appearance
of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah.[79] In all those
instances the highest authority which governs our own faith requires
us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form (a form so real
that it is recognized for superhuman only by its "doing wondrously"),
and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the
world. This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of a
God; and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the Greek
mind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavouring to explain it
away in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition,
the tangible existence of its deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--
human-hearted,--capable at their choice of meeting man absolutely in
his own nature--feasting with him--talking with him--fighting with
him, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed;[80] or else,
dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the
plague upon the Greeks,[81] when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as
he moves, and yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but
as plague; or, finally, retiring completely into the material universe
which they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as
Scamander with Achilles, through his waves.
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