The world of myth lies between the world of
silence and the world of language. Like figures that
seem to loom larger than life in the gathering twilight,
the figures of the world of myth seem huge as they emerge
from the twilight of silence.
   Their language is not that of words but of deeds writ
large on the wall of silence. The words they speak when
their deeds are done seem to be especially planned, as if
in expectation of the coming of man.
   Christ came so directly from silence into the word (this
directness of Christ also gave human words their greatest
directness) that the whole world between silence and lan-
guage—the world of mythology—was exploded and bereft 
of its significance and value. The characters in the world
of myth now became demons stealing language from man
and using it to cast demonic spells. Until the birth of
Christ they were the leaders of men, but now they became
the mis-leaders, the seducers, of men.
   Before the coming of Christ, in the final centuries before
His birth, a silence went through the ancient world. The
old gods were silent, actively silent as an offering to Christ,
the God who was coming to men. Now that men no longer
sacrificed to the old gods, the gods themselves offered
their silence as a sacrifice to the new God. They offered
it that He might transform it into the Word.