Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND EPOCH 321but by a natural necessity. In the faith, God is thecause of all things by creating them out of nothing,by creating them according to an idea which is inHimself, by creating them for Himself. He is thePower which works, the Exemplar which guides, theEnd to which all things tend. Being in these threerelations the cause of the world, He is its sole author,yet absolutely independent of it, for it is not Hiseing and Substance which are the being and substanceof the world. He is as little the form of theworld as He is its matter, for He created both outof nothing, and with them called into existence theuniverse in its all but infinite variety. iIt is in His character of Creator that God is theRevealer of His will, the Giver of law, the Goverof mankind the Rewarder and the Punisher of mIt is part of natural religion to believe in Himhese. In the poets and historians of Greece, gously as Polytheism had lowered the conception cdivine things, yet a divine power was recognised twhich these attributes belonged. And a like recognition lay at the basis of the religious rites. In the popularmind and feeling such a power was still appealedto, often with a singular and personal appellation, asGod, or Father, especially in times of emotion, amidthe troubles and sorrow of public and private life.It is in the philosophical teaching from Thales toPlotinus that we find this conception of God mostobscured and least recognised. And the reason seems3 that such a conception springs out of thatCreatorship which this philosophy from beginning tcend denied, and in the most emphatic denial of itthe Neoplatonic system, expired.1 See Kleutgen, Philosophic dcr Vorzcit, ii. 865, 866.VOL. III. X