These of the minstrels are the wretched myths.”
“For it was not from need that God made the world; that He might reap honours from men and the other gods and demons, winning a kind of revenue from creation, and from us, fumes, and from the gods and demons, their proper ministries,” says Plato. Most instructively, therefore, says Paul in the Acts of the Apostles: “The God that made the world, and all things in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped by men’s hands, as if He needed anything; seeing that it is He Himself that giveth to all breath, and life, and all things.”[814] And Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, says in this book of the Republic, “that we ought to make neither temples nor images; for that no work is worthy of the gods.” And he was not afraid to write in these very words: “There will be no need to build temples. For a temple is not worth much, and ought not to be regarded as holy. For nothing is worth much, and holy, which is the work of builders and mechanics.” Rightly, therefore, Plato too, recognising the world as God’s temple, pointed out to the citizens a spot in the city where their idols were to be laid up. “Let not, then, any one again,” he says, “consecrate temples to the gods. For gold and silver in other states, in the case of private individuals and in the temples, is an invidious possession; and ivory, a body which has abandoned the life, is not a sacred votive offering; and steel and brass are the instruments of wars; but whatever one wishes to dedicate, let it be wood of one tree, as also stone for common temples.” Rightly, then, in the great epistle he says: “For it is not capable of expression, like other branches of study. But as the result of great intimacy with this subject, and living with it, a sudden light, like that kindled by a coruscating fire, arising in the soul, feeds itself.” Are not these statements like those of Zephaniah the prophet? “And the Spirit of the Lord took me, and brought me up to the fifth heaven, and I beheld angels called Lords; and their diadem was set on in the Holy Spirit; and each of them had a throne sevenfold brighter than the light of the rising sun; and they dwelt in temples of salvation, and hymned the ineffable, Most High God.”[815]
CHAPTER XII.
GOD CANNOT BE EMBRACED IN WORDS OR BY THE MIND.
“For both is it a difficult task to discover the Father and Maker of this universe; and having found Him, it is impossible to declare Him to all. For this is by no means capable of expression, like the other subjects of instruction,” says the truth-loving Plato. For he had heard right well that the all-wise Moses, ascending the mount for holy contemplation, to the summit of intellectual objects, necessarily commands that the whole people do not accompany him. And when the Scripture says, “Moses entered into the thick darkness where God was,” this shows to those capable of understanding, that God is invisible and beyond expression by words. And “the darkness”—which, is in truth, the unbelief and ignorance of the multitude—obstructs the gleam of the truth. And again Orpheus, the theologian, aided from this quarter, says:
“One is perfect in himself, and all things are made the progeny of one,”
or, “are born;” for so also is it written. He adds:
“Him
No one of mortals has seen, but He sees all.”
And he adds more clearly:
“Him see I not, for round about, a cloud