Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 153are not simply patterns. They are at the same timeefficient causes, powers, which reduce to order the asyet unarranged elements, and impress on everythingtheir qualities. Thus it can also be said that thearchetypal world consists of the invisible powers whichas a train surround the Godhead. It is through theseinvisible powers that God is active in the world, andworks in it what on account of His exalted majesty Hecannot produce immediately. They are the servantsand deputies of the Supreme God, the messengersthrough whom He communicates His will to men,the agents mediating between God and finite things,portions of the universal reason, which forming andordering bear sway in the world. They are theindissoluble bands wherewith God has encompassed theuniverse, the pillars which He has set under it. Hencethey can be also descried as the ministering spirits andinstruments of the divine will. They are those puresouls which are called by the Greeks demons, by Mosesangels, and thus they come to be invoked by man.If a Greek philosopher, who desired above all thingsto restore the doctrine of the divine unity, yet tomaintain the rites and worship of his ancestral gods,and to reconcile the one with the other, met withsuch a theory set forth in his own language, whatcould be more likely than that he would avail himselfof it to present to his countrymen such a view of theworld as that above drawn from the works of Plutarch ?He would strip off from it everything which had aspecial relation to the Jewish people, and he would besilent as to the source from which it was derived.The angelic messengers enjoying a celestial life andpresiding over nations and individuals in Philo mightwell suggest a place for the national gods and heroes