§ 6. How other Nations were elected and called.
Other nations were chosen, too, for other purposes. The Greeks also were a chosen people—chosen to develop the idea of beauty, as the Jews that of religion. Their mission was beauty in art and in literature. It was no accident that they came as they did from confluent races, flowing together from India and Phœnicia, and settling in that sweet climate and romantic land, where the lovely Ægean, tossing its soft blue waters on the resounding shore, tempted them to navigation, and awakened their intellect by the sight of many lands. There they did their work. They made their calling and election sure. Greek architecture—one birth of beauty after another—was born. Athens was crowned with marvellous temples, whose exquisite proportions amaze and charm us to-day—inimitable creations of beauty. Homer came, and then epic poetry was born. Æschylus and tragedy came; Pindar and the lyric song; Theophrastus and pastoral music; Anacreon and the strain which bears his special name. And so Phidias and his companions created sculpture, Herodotus history, Demosthenes oratory, Plato and Aristotle philosophy, Zeuxis painting, and Pericles statesmanship. This was their election, and they made it sure.
The Romans also had their chosen work. They were elected to develop the idea of law. A prosaic people, but filled with notions of justice, they developed jurisprudence. To show that a nation can be governed not by despotic will, nor by popular will, but by law,—this was the office of Rome. As long as it did this work it prospered; when it ceased to do it, it fell. All other races, no doubt, have their special calling too. Some make it sure; others seem to fail of making it sure, and so disappear. Thus the [pg 279] election of the Jews shows a principle of God's government, and is not an exceptional case.
That which is true of nations and races is also true of religions and of Christian denominations. All Christians are a chosen people. They are chosen for the work of teaching to the human race the great doctrines of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Other religions were sent to men too. Mohammed had his mission—to convert the idolatrous Arabs to Monotheism. The religions of Asia were intended to prepare the way for Christianity by teaching the elementary ideas of religion and morality.