Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

[Footnote 81: ][ (return) ] Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31.

[Footnote 82: ][ (return) ] See ch. v. and vi., "On the Origin of those Truths which are found in the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen."

[Footnote 83: ][ (return) ] Ibid., vol. i. p. 274.

The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. "A direct communication of the Divine Will was made to the primogenitors of our race," and to this source alone we are indebted for all correct ideas of right and wrong. "Whatever is found pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be traced to indirect revelation." [⁸⁴] Verbal instruction--tradition or scripture--thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doctrine of immortality, and of a future retribution, [⁸⁵] the practice of sacrifice--precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the same source. [⁸⁶] Thus the only medium by which religious truth can possibly become known to the masses of mankind is tradition. The ultimate foundation on which the religious faith and the religious practices of universal humanity have rested, with the exception of the Jews, and the favored few to whom the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and easily corrupted tradition.

[Footnote 84: ][ (return) ] Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. ii. p. 470.

[Footnote 85: ][ (return) ] Id. ib., vol. i. p. 11.

[Footnote 86: ][ (return) ] Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26.

The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be obvious from the following considerations:

1. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the well-being of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be.

The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The perfection of humanity can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved, the purpose of God in the existence of humanity can never be accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved. Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are inconceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of accountability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, to the masses of men, rest on tradition alone, is incredible. Is there no known and accessible God to the outlying millions of our race who, in consequence of the circumstances of birth and education, which are beyond their control, have had no access to an oral revelation, and among whom the dim shadowy rays of an ancient tradition have long ago expired? Are the eight hundred millions of our race upon whom the light of Christianity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our race? Has the universal Father left his "own offspring" without a single native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine Parent, and abandoned them to solitary and dreary orphanage? Could not he who gave to matter its properties and laws,--the properties and laws through whose operation he is working out his own purposes in the realm of nature,--could not he have also given to mind ideas and principles which, logically developed, would lead to recognition of a God, and of our duty to God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out his sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who gave to man the appetency for food, and implanted in his nature the social instincts to preserve his physical being, have implanted in his heart a "feeling after God," and an instinct to worship God in order to the conservation of his spiritual being? How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility and accountability of all the race before God? Those theologians who are so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with the native power of attaining the knowledge of God can not, on any principle of equity, show how the heathen are "without excuse" when, in involuntary ignorance of God, they "worship the creature instead of the Creator," and violate a law of duty of which they have no possible means to attain the barest knowledge.