[Footnote 967: ][ (return) ] "Phædrus," § 47-50 (Whewell's translation).
[Footnote 968: ][ (return) ] "Vetus opinio est, jam usque ab heroicis ducta temporibus, eaque et populi Romani et omnium gentium firmata consensu, versari quandem inter homines divinationem."--Cicero, "De Divin.," i. I.
Paul, then, found, even in that focus of Paganism, the city of Athens, religious aspirations tending towards Jesus Christ. A true philosophic method, notwithstanding its shortcomings and imperfections, concluded by desiring and seeking "the Unknown God," by demanding him from all forms of worship, from all schools of philosophy. The great work of preparation in the heathen world consisted in the developing of the desire for salvation. It proved that God is the great want of every human soul; that there is a profound affinity between conscience and the living God; and that Tertullian was right when he wrote the "Testimonium Animæ naturaliter Christianæ." [969] And when it was sufficiently demonstrated that "the world by philosophy knew not God (as a Redeeming God and Saviour), then it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." This was all a dispensation of divine providence, which was determined by, or "in, the wisdom of God." [970]
The history of the religions and philosophies of human origin thus becomes to us a striking confirmation of the truth of Christianity. It shows there is a wondrous harmony between the instinctive wants and yearnings of the human heart, as well as the necessary ideas and laws of the reason, and the fundamental principles of revealed religion. There is "a law written on the heart"--written by the finger of God, which corresponds to the laws written by the same finger on "tables of stone." There are certain necessary and immutable principles and ideas infolded in the reason of man, which harmonize with the revelations of the Eternal Logos in the written word. [971] There are instinctive longings, mysterious yearnings of the human heart, to which that unveiling of the heart of God which is made in the teaching and life of the incarnate God most satisfyingly answers. Within the depths of the human spirit there is an "oracle" which responds to the voice of "the living oracles of God."
[Footnote 969: ][ (return) ] Pressensé, "Religions before Christ" (Introduction); Neander, "Church History," vol. i. (Introduction).
[Footnote 970: ][ (return) ] I Corinthians, i. 21.
[Footnote 971: ][ (return) ] "The surmise of Plato, that the world of appearance subsists in and by a higher world of Divine Thought, is confirmed by Christianity when it tells us of a Divine subsistence--that Eternal Word by whom and in whom all things consist."--Vaughan, "Hours with the Mystics," vol. i. p. 213.
Here, then, are two distinct and independent revelations--the unwritten revelation which God has made to all men in the constitution of the human mind, and the external written revelation which he has made in the person and teaching of his Son. And these two are perfectly harmonious. We have here two great volumes--the volume of conscience, and the volume of the New Testament. We open them, and find they announce the same truths--one in dim outline, the other in a full portraiture. There are the same fundamental principles underlying both revelations. They both bear the impress of divinity. The history of philosophy may have been marked by many errors of interpretation; so, also, has the history of dogmatic theology. Men may have often misunderstood and misinterpreted the dictates of conscience; so have theologians misunderstood and misinterpreted the dictates of revelation. The perversions of conscience and reason have been plead in defense of error and sin; and so, for ages, have the perversions of Scripture been urged in defense of slavery, oppression, falsehood, and wrong. Sometimes the misunderstood utterances of conscience, of philosophy, and of science have been arrayed against the incorrect interpretations of the Word of God. But when both are better understood, and more justly conceived, they are found in wondrous harmony. When the New Testament speaks to man of God, of duty, of immortality, and of retribution, man feels that its teachings "commend themselves to his conscience" and reason. When it speaks to him of redemption, of salvation, of eternal life and blessedness, he feels that it meets and answers all the wants and longings of his heart. Thus does Christianity throw light upon the original revelations of God in the human conscience, and answers all the yearnings of the human soul. So it is found in individual experiences, so it has been found in the history of humanity. As Leverrier and Adams were enabled to affirm, from purely mathematical reasoning, that another planet must exist beyond Uranus which had never yet been seen by human eyes, and then, afterwards, that affirmation was gloriously verified in the discovery of Neptune by the telescope of Galle; so the reasonings of ancient philosophy, based on certain necessary laws of mind, enabled man to affirm the existence of a God, of the soul, of a future retribution, and an eternal life beyond the grave; and, then, subsequently, these were brought fully into light, and verified by the Gospel.
We conclude in the words of Pressensé: "To isolate it from the past, would be to refuse to comprehend the nature of Christianity itself, and the extent of its triumphs. Although the Gospel is not, as has been affirmed, the product of anterior civilizations--a mere compound of Greek and Oriental elements--it is not the less certain that it brings to the human mind the satisfaction vainly sought by it in the East as in the West. Omnia subito is not its device, but that of the Gnostic heresy. Better to say, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that the night of paganism had its stars to light it, but that they called to the Morning-star which stood over Bethlehem."