The gods of Egypt were mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft.

In Greece, on the other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be worshipped with any real reverence.

Partaking in all human faults and vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed contempt.

And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece, in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the gods ceased to be objects of respect at all.
* * * * * We see, from these examples, how each of the great ethnic religions tends to a disproportionate and excessive, because one-sided, statement of some divine truth or law.

The question then emerges at this point: "Is Christianity also one-sided, or does it contain in itself _all_ these truths ?" Is it _teres atque rotundus_, so as to be able to meet every natural religion with a kindred truth, and thus to supply the defects of each from its own fulness?
If it can be shown to possess this amplitude, it at once is placed by itself in an order of its own.