Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

PO\VKR OF THK GREEK PHILOSOPHY 329wthis sacrifice to the One God was the witness of beliefin Him, and the actions of men rested on their belief,which was mirrored in their worship. So strong, soperfect, so self-supporting was the triple cord bywhich God bound in one the new society of rescuedman. And let us well note that He joined togetherthe civil and the divine society. The new father ofthe race was its priest. The covenant for perpetualgenerations was made with sacrifice, and so restedupon a positive right of the deepest signification. Thefamily from which nations should spring was thus consecrated,and the State sanctified in its birth by itshomage to God its Pounder. And this connectionwas the ideal relation between the commonwealth andreligion for the whole race.Again, it is to be noted that at the head of thecivil and religious society of man thus founded therestood one who had seen all the glory and civilisationof the old world before the Flood, and had moreoverbeen a " preacher of justice" to that "world of theimpious " in its corruption. It is not from man makingthe tentative efforts of an inexperienced childhood,and far less from man as he grovelled on the penaldescent of savagery, that the second society ofhuman race took its rise ; but it was set up infathership and headship of a Patriarch renownedp*^o "tried wisdom and eminent sanctity. Thus hisfirst step upon the recovered earth is to offer sacrifice; in which is contained potentially the whole ofman's religion to God ; and the importance of the actis signified by the words following it: " And God1 Ezech. xiv. 14. "And if these three men, Noah, Daniel, andJob, % shall -- be in it, _--- they shall deliver their own souls by " their v justiceHosts'3