SERMON IV.
THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Acts, xvii., 22, 23.
Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.
The city of Athens was wholly given to idolatry. It was crowded with altars, dedicated to the supposed superior deities, to deified men, to abstract virtues, Love, Truth, Mercy, and the like. Whatever new god was described and recommended to them was immediately recognised, and thenceforth worshipped; and, besides, the Athenians’ love of something new, led them to search out for and invent gods for themselves. Hence it came to pass, that there were more idols in that one city than in all the rest of Greece: so that Satirist did not much exaggerate when he said that in Athens you might more easily find a god than a man. It belongs not to our present purpose to consider how this arose; to contemplate the strange coexistence of so much superstition and so much cultivation of intellect, or to strive to enter into the feelings which animated Paul, when his spirit was stirred within him at the sight of the city wholly given to idolatry. We pass on to the time when the Apostle stood on Mars’s hill, in sight of many heathen altars, surrounded by Epicureans and Stoics and disciples of many other schools of philosophy, some striving to silence him, others intent upon hearing something new from him—to meet the contentious gainsayings of the one, to enlist the curiosity of the other; to make use of their various dispositions, of all that he saw and heard, in promoting the glory of God, and, if it might be, in leading them to salvation.
It must be borne in mind that some of these news-seeking Athenians inconsistently enough contended with him, because he taught what was novel; while others, on that very account, were favourable to him, hoping that he would set forth some strange gods—some additional objects of worship to whom they might erect altars. “Ye men of Athens,” he said, “I perceive from actual observation that you, more than other people, have great regard for religion.” This is the right meaning of the words translated: “In all things ye are too superstitious.” It is not likely that the Apostle would have commenced a speech intended to conciliate and enlighten them, with words that would at once affront them, and make them deaf to all else he had to say. Besides, it is clear from what follows, that he is not directly calling upon them to abandon what was false, but to understand and accept rightly a truth which they held in ignorance. “I say nothing to you now upon the many gods whom you worship by name, but, pointing to an altar inscribed to the Unknown God (it was probably in sight) I answer those who contend with me for speaking about the unknown, and gratify those who want to hear something new, by taking that altar as my text, and preaching to you about ‘the Unknown God’—about no new god, for He is already the object of your worship; but still about one of whom much that is new to you may be said. Give ear to me, ye that are so full of reverence for the gods, while I describe to you an object indeed of your present reverence, but one of whose nature and operations and demands upon you, you know nothing.”
Respecting the existence of such an altar, we are told that the Athenians through the very excess of their idolatry (which led them to look for gods in every place and circumstance, and to ascribe every event, good or ill, to the influence of some deity) had on more than one occasion, when an unusually severe pestilence had visited them, which they could not connect with any of their known gods, conjectured that it must be the doing of some god whom they did not propitiate with sacrifices, and, failing to find out who it was, and yet fearing to neglect his worship, had caused altars without names to be erected, and offerings to be made to the nameless being; and that in course of time these altars came to be described, and to bear a corresponding inscription, as severally the altars of an “unknown god.” There is no reason to suppose that they meant to exalt that god above the others, that they had any clearly defined ideas of the general operations of one unknown Being, much less that they meant under that title to worship the God of the Jews; but with a kind of natural instinct, a very vague feeling that something beyond and above what they knew, existed, they had stumbled, as it were, in the dark, upon a real truth, which was now to be revealed to them. “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship—Whom you are right in worshipping, but of Whose proper worship you know nothing, Him declare I, and reveal unto you.” You know how St. Paul went on, meeting without mentioning the errors of the various sects of philosophers, that there was indeed a God who made the world, and all things therein; that He was not a mere idol of wood and stone (“dwelling not in temples made with hands”), that He had no such passions, and no such needs as they ascribed to Jove and Mars and their deified men (“Neither is worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything”), that He was not a sentiment—an ideal thing—a being bound by fate—an indifferent spectator of men’s ways. “He giveth to all life and breath and all things.” “In Him we live and move and have our being.” “He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He hath chosen;” to whom He has borne such signal testimony in raising Him from the dead; in whose name, and at whose command, I come to tell you of the resurrection from the dead, and to call you out of the ignorance which God will no longer wink at, and to urge upon you repentance and preparation for judgment. So he spoke of the unknown God. Some mocked, and refused to understand; some were in doubt and difficulty, and wished to hear more; others began to know Him who had hitherto been unknown, and clave unto the Apostle, and believed. And shortly after Paul departed from Athens, never, as far as we know, to visit again!
It would be interesting to consider the strange rise and spread of ignorance which in course of time made the God, Who had been seen and heard and walked with in Eden, and had never left Himself without witness, wholly unknown to the creatures of His hand, and the objects of His providential care; to contemplate the idolatry of ignorant heathen man, not seeing God in all His works, not able to find Him even when looking for Him and desiring to worship Him, believing in every god but the true One, sometimes even offering sacrifices to devils; to discuss, too, how it is the world by wisdom knows not, and never has known God, that intellect cannot search Him out, that intellect has even blinded many to whom the unknown God was plainly exhibited; to ask how much of this is natural, how much unnatural, how much judicial—the punishment of pride, the reward of loving darkness rather than light, because of evil deeds. But interesting as would be the consideration of “God unknown in the world,” there is a more important theme suggested by the text for us to dwell on, namely, “God unknown in the Church.” “There standeth one among you Whom ye know not.” Let me speak to you on this, brethren.
Whatever may be the state and disposition of the people whom the clergyman has to deal with in his various daily ministrations and his intercourse with the world, once a week, at least, he addresses an assembly in some sense given to religion. As he stands in the pulpit on the Lord’s Day he may adopt almost the words of St. Paul on the Areopagus: “I perceive that you (and such as you) are more than the rest of mankind God-fearing, taking an interest in religion, listening to its teaching, partaking of its ordinances, supplicating, praising, serving God.”
It may, indeed, occasionally be that some present themselves to see if there is anything in the church for them to object to, or ridicule; that others have come in conformity to the fashion, to hear something new, to see and be seen; to make a show of respectability, to wile away an idle time; and that many others, though proposing to themselves the observance of a religious duty, are so formal, so listless, so unreal, that it cannot be said of them that they are “given to religion.” Nevertheless, I repeat that the clergyman, as he stands in the pulpit, has before him the best, i.e., the most religious of mankind; not mockers, and revilers, and persecutors; not gainsayers, and despisers, and forgetters; but real worshippers—more or less reverential and earnest, more or less enlightened—of the true God. But has he not in these same persons (as St. Paul had in the Athenians) many worshippers of an unknown God? May he not venture to say to almost all, “Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” Christian worshippers, my brethren, often have many idols, who share almost equally with God their interest and affections and service. They have, many of them, their “ism,” their Paul, their Cephas, or Apollos, their favourite dogma, their preferences and prejudices for some particular rites, and ceremonies, and modes of worship. In church, and out of church, their religion consists largely in giving heed to these things: God is in their thoughts, but not in all their thoughts, or not the chief, the engrossing object of their thoughts; He is one of many objects. You find this out if you listen to their remarks after service. “Such a chant went well or badly; the preacher’s manner was pleasing, or the contrary; his language very ornate, or very bald; the theme one they like, or one they do not like; the rubric strictly observed, or strangely disregarded;” and so on. Of course, as all these things are means to an end, and as the end is gained, or not gained, by their suitableness, or the opposite, it is lawful and right to give them some consideration: but I put it to you, brethren, whether they are not too often regarded as themselves the end; as though, provided they were satisfactory, there was nothing more wanting; as though they were rightly as much the objects of interest as the God in Whose service they are used, or, rather, as though regarding them were regarding God!
O brethren, we are too attentive to the system—too regardless of the Centre! We want to know—(to feel, I mean, for the Christian’s knowledge is of the heart)—that God is above all—that where other objects have anything like an equal share of attention, where they hide Him from us in His pure essence and direct influence, there He is ignorantly worshipped—that He is a Spirit, not a chant, a voice, a figure of speech, a rubric, a turning east or west. Through these we may reach Him; many of them are steps and accessories to worship; but if in these we rest, then we set them up as idols, side by side with Him, and prove that to us He is but as the unknown god of the Athenians.
See, dear brethren, I beseech you, if aught of this old error clings to you, and pray God to clear you from it, and resolve henceforth to strive to keep clear. Treat means as means—value them; be glad that they are becomingly afforded you, and rejoice if they help you; but do not let the best of them beguile you, nor the worst of them hinder you, from finding and worshipping God Himself; from going away filled with thoughts of Him. “I prayed to God; I praised Him; I held communion with Him; I heard the things of God from His messenger, and have now to go and live by what I have done, and received, and heard.” These are the thoughts to take away from church with you, and to prove to you that you wisely worship the known God.