Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

322 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMGreek thought in its best representatives was everinclined to a pantheistic origin of things, which formedthe very core of its latest system. It is incompatiblewith a God who is independent of the world, with anyfree ruling of the world by the power directing it,with moral freedom on the part of man, \vith allmoral dignity, with any real immortality of reasonablenatures, with retribution after death to man as apersonal being. There is neither moral freedom normoral dignity without the freedom of the will. Onthe other hand, the God, who gives their whole beingto things, can never desert the universe so made.Mind no less than matter is His mere creature;matter He moulds at His pleasure. His mostfinished work is endowing the creature with personality,as a self-conscious moral being, its own, and notanother's, and as such, an image of the divine immor-talitvJand self-subsistence. And the siffnsOof Hispresence are that He communicates His will, and inso doing establishes law, that He governs, rewards,and punishes. And if His government here is manifestlynot complete, because reward and punishmentby no means always follow according to His own law,yet His own being, the inviolable Sanctity which isHis nature, forbids that they should not follow hereafter.Among men the evil often triumph in this life,and the good suffer, of which the crucifixion of ourLord is the great example. But in this, the world'sutter condemnation, is contained also its imperishablehope, the well-head of Christian life, since the failureof justice here makes certain that hereafter in whichit will be fully attained. All these conceptions, thatis, the revelation of God's will as a rule to His creatures,the law thus established, the government of them