40 CHAPTER I PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD. heathens embraced the gospel, to the shame of the Jews.63 fluence of the divine Logos before his incarnation,69 who There was a spiritual Israel scattered throughout the was the tutor of mankind, the original light of reason, heathen world, that never received the circumcision of shining in the darkness and lighting every man, the sowthe flesh, but the unseen circumcision of the heart by the er scattering in the soil of heathendom the seeds of truth, hand of that Spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and is beauty, and virtue.70 not bound to any human laws and to ordinary means. The flower of paganism, with which we are conThe Old Testament furnishes several examples of true cerned here, appears in the two great nations of classic piety outside of the visible communion with the Jewish antiquity, Greece and Rome. With the language, moralchurch, in the persons of Melchisedec, the friend of Abra- ity, literature, and religion of these nations, the apostles ham, the royal priest, the type of Christ; Jethro, the priest came directly into contact, and through the whole first of Midian; Rahab, the Canaanite woman and hostess of age the church moves on the basis of these nationalities. Joshua and Caleb; Ruth, the Moabitess and ancestress of These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations our Saviour; King Hiram, the friend of David; the queen of the ancient world, and shared the earth among them. of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; The Jews were chosen for things eternal, to keep the Naaman the Syrian; and especially Job, the sublime suf- sanctuary of the true religion. The Greeks prepared the ferer, who rejoiced in the hope of his Redeemer.64 elements of natural culture, of science and art, for the The elements of truth, morality, and piety scattered use of the church. The Romans developed the idea of law, throughout ancient heathenism, may be ascribed to three and organized the civilized world in a universal empire, sources. In the first place, man, even in his fallen state, ready to serve the spiritual universality of the gospel. retains some traces of the divine image, a knowledge of Both Greeks and Romans were unconscious servants of God,65 however weak, a moral sense or conscience,66 and Jesus Christ, “the unknown God.” a longing for union with the Godhead, for truth and for These three nations, by nature at bitter enmity among righteousness.67 In this view we may, with Tertullian, call themselves, joined hands in the superscription on the the beautiful and true sentences of a Socrates, a Plato, an cross, where the holy name and the royal title of the ReAristotle, of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, deemer stood written, by the command of the heathen Virgil, Seneca, Plutarch, “the testimonies of a soul Pilate, “in Hebrew and Greek and Latin.”71 constitutionally Christian,”68 of a nature predestined to § 12. Grecian Literature, and the Roman Empire. Christianity. Secondly, some account must be made of The literature of the ancient Greeks and the universal traditions and recollections, however faint, coming down empire of the Romans were, next to the Mosaic religion, from the general primal revelations to Adam and Noah. the chief agents in preparing the world for Christianity. But the third and most important source of the heathen They furnished the human forms, in which the divine anticipations of truth is the all-ruling providence of God, substance of the gospel, thoroughly prepared in the bowho has never left himself without a witness. Particularly som of the Jewish theocracy, was moulded. They laid the must we consider, with the ancient Greek fathers, the in- natural foundation for the supernatural edifice of the kingdom of heaven. God endowed the Greeks and Romans with the richest natural gifts, that they might reach 63 Comp. Matt. 8:10; 15:28. Luke 7:9. Acts 10:35. 64 Even Augustine, exclusive as he was, adduces the case the highest civilization possible without the aid of Chrisof Job in proof of the assertion that the kingdom of God un- tianity, and thus both provide the instruments of human der the Old dispensation was not confined to the Jews, and science, art, and law for the use of the church, and yet at then adds: “Divinitus autem provisum fuisse non dubito, ut the same time show the utter impotence of these alone to ex hoc uno sciremus, etiam per alias gentes esse potuisse, qui bless and save the world. secundum Deum vixerunt, eique placuerunt, pertinentes ad The Greeks, few in number, like the Jews, but vastly spiritualem Hierusalem.” De Civit. Dei, xviii. 47. more important in history than the numberless hordes 65 Rom. 1:19, το–ῒ –ͅϊγνωστὸντου θεου. Comp, my of the Asiatic empires, were called to the noble task of annotations on Lange in loc. bringing out, under a sunny sky and with a clear mind, 66 Rom. 2:14, 15. Comp. Lange in loc. the idea of humanity in its natural vigor and beauty, 67 Comp. Acts 17:3, 27, 28, and my remarks on the altar to the θεὸς ἄγνωστος in the History of the Apost. Church. § 73, p. 68 Testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae.
69 Λόγος ἄσαρκος , Λόγος σπερματικός . 70 Comp. John 1:4, 5, 9, 10. 71 John 19:20.
