But when we enter the province of history, and undertake to trace the fruits of heathenism, we shall also show that these fruits might really spring from the germ of the popular religion. This by no means contradicts the position, that some better fruit may have proceeded from the same source; but rather, in this way, the obviously corrupt fruit only is traced to the corrupt root, without attending here to the isolated parcels of finer fruit which may occur, as perhaps in Pythagoras, Pindar, Socrates, Plato, and Plutarch. Vain, on the other hand, would be the task of him who would prove, that the mass of weeds which have luxuriated within the pale of the christian church from the beginning, might have sprung from the root of the Spirit of Christ. Bitter and sweet flow not from the same fountain. 'What have the chaff and wheat to do together? saith the Lord."* The darkness loved itself, and would not comprehend the light that shone into it; hence came the weeds. Theophilus of Antioch compared the little christian church in the wide domains of heathenism, to verdant islands in a great raging ocean. Thus also, within the pale of Christianity, has the congregation of the regenerate always stood in relation to the children of the world. For, in every century, there have been only a few who, awakened by the deep inward alarm and call of the Spirit of God, arose, and girding up their loins and pouring oil into their lamps, acknowledged and embraced, as the great purpose of life, the annihilation of the man of sin even to the deepest abysses of the corrupt heart, the daily crucifixion of the lusts of the flesh and of the sense, the daily dying and daily resurrection with the Redeemer of their souls. But where there really stood, amid the darkness, such men taught of God, such sacerdotal spirits to whom He daily preaches of the hidden wisdom, there flowed a milder gleam on the dark clouds of night around them. The kingdom of God on earth, appears as the sun through clouds; one sees indeed the light, but not the sun; but when the clouds are gone, he sees both light and sun. Hence, therefore, even that Christianity which has not the spirit of Christ, is yet, nevertheless, not in all respects like heathenism. It receives more or less of imperceptible influences from the real children of God who walk within its pale. Indeed, more or less of this leavening spirit is infused even into public life, into political relations, and into science. Hence the merely external Christian is exceedingly ungrateful, who reviles those who are Christians in earnest; since

* Jer. 23: 28.

it is these very persons who, calling down by their prayers the divine power and Spirit of God, become channels to diffuse blessings imperceptibly even on the enemies of God's kingdom.

In what has now been said, the point of view is also indicated in which we wish that to be regarded, which will hereafter be said respecting the blessing of Christianity which manifests itself in the public and external life of Christendom in general.

Finally, should any one still further object, that the number of Christians who are and have been spiritually planted in Christ, is so very small; that, by the appearing of the Son of Man upon earth, "by the second shaking of the earth," so little has been accomplished; it may be answered, in the first place, that all the thousands who have received only rays of the sun instead of his full splendour, are not to be counted for nothing. It was indeed to their great detriment, that they did not fully admit the sun; yet one ray of this sun, is warmer than the strongest candle-light. It is further to be noted, that the most divine fruits of Christianity, like those of the private Christian, blossom in secret. As nature is noisy only when she rends asunder, but is silent when she brings forth; so it is the abuse of divine power, which is more narrated in history; while none knows its blessed influences, except only the sufferer who is refreshed, and the angel who numbers his dried tears. And who is there that has ever sat by, as a curious spectator, at that exhibition which of all others is the greatest in the kingdom of God, when the heart falls into rebellion against itself, and flaming lust and smouldering rancor, amid infinite contests, are extinguished by the tears of an humility which lies low before God! There first, yea there, where not even the eye of the Christian brother may cast a glance, is the excellency and glory of him who is born of the Spirit. There smokes an incense more precious to the Lord than all the aloe of the most fragrant good works; since nothing is greater before God than the proud human heart, humbling itself and divesting itself of its hidden selfishness before his flaming eye.

PART I.

ON THE ORIGIN OF HEATHENISM.

Let us first hear what the apostle Paul says of the origin of heathenisin, that we may build our views thereon, whatever they may be, as on a safe foundation. He says, according to an ac

.*

curate translation of the passage: "The divine wrath will be manifested from heaven against all ungodliness and unholiness of men who, through unboliness, suppress the truth. For so much as can be known of God, is surely manifest to them; God himself hath manifested it to them. For what in him is peculiarly invisible, his eternal power and divinity, even that appears, as it were, visible in his creatures since the creation of the world, as soon as we betake ourselves with our inward consciousness to this contemplation; so that they (the heathen) have no excuse.1 They knew God indeed, but they honoured him not as the most high God, and were not thankful to him as such; but they became fools in their speculations, and their dull apprehension was deluded. They became fools, because they pretended to be the wise; and substituted in the place of the glory of the imperishable God, the image of the form of perishable men, of birds, of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. Therefore God also on his part hath given them up through the lusts of their sense to impurity, so that they have dishonoured their own. bodies;-they have changed the true nature of God for a false one, and have honoured and worshipped the creature more than the Creator, to whom be glory forever! Amen. Therefore, I say, God hath given them up to debasing lusts, inasmuch as the women have changed the natural intercourse to the unnatural, and likewise the men in passing by the natural use of the women, have burnt in lust toward each other, as man practising shame with man, wherein they have prepared for themselves the recompense which is due to them for their apostasy. For, as thus they did not regard it worth their pains, to attain to the consciousness of God, so God also hath given them up to a debased mind, to commit indecency, being full of profaneness, whoredom, malice, avarice, baseness; full of envy, murder, contention, mischief, fraud; calumniators, slanderers, despisers of God, haughty, proud, boastful, mischief-makers, disobedient to parents, covenant-breakers, unkind, implacable, unmerciful; who, although they well knew the moral law of God, namely,

* Rom. 1: 18 seq.

1 Book of Wisdom, 13: 8, "Nevertheless they are not thereby excused. For if they have been able to perceive so much, as to esteem the creature, why have they not sooner found the Lord himself?" Athanasius' Apology p. 33, "As the great artist Phidias is known by the proportion and taste in his statues, so God from his great works."

that they who do such things are worthy of death, still not only do the same, but also bestow applause on those who do them."

What the apostle would here say, we will endeavour more clearly to develope by a paraphrase. Paul would say this: "I am a preacher of the joyful message of a Redeemer to all men, for all men need such a Redeemer. This I will first of all show to you heathen. The wrath of God will one day reveal itself from heaven upon all those who, through unholiness, have suppressed the truth. And these are ye, the heathen. This truth in question consists in the right knowledge of God. But this, so far as it is universally accessible to men, has been revealed to you. No one can know abstractly what God is in himself; we can only learn his attributes, and, through them, his nature. These attributes of God are partly physical, partly moral, partly power (duvaus), partly divinity (orns). Although in themselves invisible, they have become in a manner visible in the creation of God that lies before us. We cannot indeed derive from nature this idea of a being perfectly unlimited in a metaphysical and moral sense, unless we previously have it in us. But we need only to suffer the revelation which is in us, to be awakened by the external revelation (voovμeva xavogarai). And this takes place thus. The unprejudiced man will feel himself impelled, by a survey of creation, to admit an infinite power which formed and limits all things, but is itself without limit. And thus there arises to him the consciousness of a being, physically unlimited and absolute. But since he must regard this being as the limiter and author of his own moral nature, he cannot do otherwise he must attribute also the highest degree of moral perfection to that unlimited Original. And in this way, if no ungodly impulse disturb this natural consciousness in man, there can develope itself, not indeed from a view of the universe, but still by a view of the universe, the consciousness of one single moral being, a God who limits all things. This simple perception did not develope itself in the heathen, although the germ of it lay in them; but the selfish impulse (n άdixia) suppressed it in the germ. Man chose to sin; he would not elevate his soul above the whole

2 Wisdom 13: 4, 5. "And as they wondered at the might and power, they should have understood from them how much mightier must he be who hath prepared all such things. For from the greatness and beauty of the works, the Creator of them is proportionally seen."

visible world. Hence the Greeks, in the speculations of their deluded reason, became fools, and sought for the Eternal within the limits of the perishable. This degeneracy in the knowledge of God, occasioned by the selfish ungodly impulse of the will, had this consequence, that the true measure for all that is more elevated, vanished,-that man lost sight of his own higher nature, and debased himself. God suffered this to take place as a righteous judgment, since it lies in the moral arrangement of the universe, that evil punishes itself, just as goodness rewards itself. As therefore man had degraded the being and nature of God down to the world of sense; so now also he degraded himself beneath the brutes, inasmuch as he was no longer guided by the light of a higher knowledge, but from the sinful inclinations of his own will. This continued until even in respect to knowledge also, the divine light continually faded more and more, so that (v. 32) in the end, man, being utterly sunken, could, with cool reflection, even approve of sin in and for itself. Hitherto, the better judgment had only been darkened in moments of sin; but now, when this had taken place, the lowest point of degradation had been reached."

This view of the holy apostle concerning the origin of the heathen deities, is new and profound. Yet before we take a nearer survey of it, we subjoin to this decision, similar declarations of some distinguished men of the ancient church, which place the apostle's doctrine in a yet clearer light, viz. of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, about the year 170; of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, 350; and of Philastrius, bishop of Brixia, 350,

In answer to the question of the heathen,-Where then is his (the Christian's) God? Theophilus gives the following reply.3 "Do you, first of all, show whether the eyes of your soul see, and the ears of your heart hear. For as they, who see with the corporeal eye, can perceive the things of ordinary life, and distinguish every variety of each, light and shade, white and black, the well formed and the ill formed, the well fitted and the ill fitted, the symmetrical and the disproportioned or the redundant or the mutilated; and as the same holds true of the hearing, where we distinguish the sharp toned, the dull toned, and the well toned; so is it with the ears of the heart and the eyes of the soul. God is seen of those only who can see him, those namely who have opened the eyes of their

3 Theophilus ad Autolyc. I. 2.