I will

I will

more adequate conceptions of him. declare his works and his counsels. shew how unworthily he is worshipped by such services as yours, and how grossly he is debased by your imaginary deities being permitted to rob him of "the honour due unto "his name "."

Nothing can exceed the force, the consistency, the dignity, with which the Apostle presses this consideration upon his hearers. As the minister and ambassador of that very God, whom the Athenians knew not, though they blindly adored him, he urges them to turn from their superstitious vanities, their dumb idols, their profane altars, to adore this sole Creator and Governor of the universe. As if presuming, from their acknowledgment of an unknown God, that they already entertained a strong, though indistinct persuasion of such a Being, essentially different from those which swelled the multifarious catalogue of their Pantheon; he seizes upon this circumstance as the vital part of the argument. "God," says he, "that made the "world and all things therein, seeing that he "is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not "in temples made with hands ;"—he is not a mere local Deity, like those whom ye wor

c Psalm xxix. 2.

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ship; neither is he worshipped with men's

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hands, as though he needed any thing; see"ing he giveth to all life, and breath, and "all things;"-He is not, as you seem to imagine, to be sought by vain oblations, by external pomp, or idle pageantry, as if he were such an one as yourselves, or depended upon your services.-Moreover, "He hath "made of one blood all nations of men, for "to dwell on all the face of the earth;" and is not, therefore, the God of this or that country or nation in particular, but equally of all mankind. To him every nation, every individual, owes both existence and preservation; and to this end are all created, that they should" seek the Lord, if haply they "might feel after him, and find him, though "he be not far from every one of us; for in "him we live, move, and have our being." Nor is this a doctrine, continues the Apostle, with which you yourselves are wholly unacquainted, since "certain also of your own "poets have said, For we are also his offspring." This last citation intimates that St. Paul regarded the more intelligent and enlightened among the heathen as recognising one Supreme Being, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind; and on this he grounds his ensuing admonition to forsake their idola

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trous superstitions: "Forasmuch, then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not "to think that the Godhead is like unto

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gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and "man's device." The inference, indeed, was obvious, and the consequence not to be gainsayed, that if the One Supreme Being whom they ignorantly worshipped was such an one as St. Paul declared Him to be, nothing could be more absurd or preposterous than the whole ritual of heathen worship, paid to senseless idols or to imaginary deities, utterly unable to hear or to reward their services.

But while we contemplate and admire the excellent use to which the Apostle thus applied an incidental occurrence, during his abode among the Athenian philosophers, a question presents itself, how far the heathen in general, or the Athenians in particular, may be said to have had any real perception of the TRUE GOD; and, if they had, from what source it was derived: for assuredly St. Paul could not mean to ascribe to the Jupiter of the heathen the attributes and perfections of JEHOVAH, when he thus led the Athenians to suppose that his God and theirs was one and the same Being. Some evidence, therefore, may reasonably be expected, that they

were not altogether destitute of this perception, however clouded or obscured.

We are wont, indeed, to consider any system of polytheism as utterly irreconcilable with the belief of "One God and Father of

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all, who is above all, and through all, and "in all "." And so unquestionably it is, where the doctrine of the Divine Unity is rightly and clearly understood. But, in point of fact, it appears that many even of the wisest among the heathen fell into this inconsistency; and while they professed to acknowledge a multiplicity of gods, greater or less in power and in consequence, and derived from some parent stock, asserted at the same time One only Being uncreated and self-existent. The theogonies of their poets, the speculations of their philosophers, and the religious institutions of the state, accorded with the belief of the common people in a numberless host of divinities, produced at different periods of time, circumscribed by local restrictions, or subordinate one to the other. neither among statesmen, philosophers, or poets, nor, perhaps, even among the great mass of the people, did the reverence paid to these entirely preclude the apprehension of a c Ephes. iv. 6.

C

But

still superior Being, invested probably in their ideas with so much more transcendent majesty from their indefinite notion of him, and their utter inability to lower him to the level of their own conceptions.

Evidence to this effect has been collected from heathen philosophers and poets. Among the former, much refined speculation is to be found respecting the abstract nature of the First Cause of all things; and upon this point the earliest philosophy appears to have been the simplest and the purest. In process of time, these simple truths became more and more the subjects of recondite speculation. From contemplation of the visible world, and from the necessary connexion between cause and effect, it was inferred that there was one First Cause of all things; and His supreme excellence and perfection were argued from the necessity of removing from the very idea of such a Being every kind of imperfection. Hence it appears that, in the opinion of these writers, the pagan polytheism did not necessarily imply that the inferior deities were self-existent, or independent; but that they were created beings, either naturally above men, or raised above men, to be honoured with religious worship, in subordination to the universal Lord and Parent.