Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

334 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof the harvest, and to them the original rite of sacrificewas still offered, and to them the mental sacrificeof prayer still ascended. Now prayer and sacrificewere the primary goods of human nature, the heirloomof Noah's f'athership, which his children in thedepth of their moral descent had retained, but sostrangely degraded. And for prayer and sacrificethe moral nature of man, still possessing from age toage sound reason and upright natural sense, and sopersisting to be the witness of the one true God inHis fallen world, continued to yearn amid all thecorruptions with which they had been tainted.When philosophy first raised its head in Greecethe corruption of the public worship had proceededvery far: yet the union between the city and itsworship was still unbroken. Moreover the greatlineaments of an original revelation from God to manwere preserved in the popular mind. The monarchyof Jupiter, a witness imperfect indeed and faltering,but still a witness to the original doctrine of thedivine unity, was impaired by a multitude of deitieshis assessors. Then again the support which theconception of creation gives to the relation of theGodhead to the world was wanting to the Greek,who only recognised a world generating itself out ofPrimal Matter or Chaos, not a world which the Godheadmade by an act of free-will. Moses set at thehead of all being a God who created because Hewilled to create, whilst in the whole Greek mythologythere is not to be met the conception of a Creator,that is, a Being before all things, who in absolutefreedom produces the universe as it pleases Him.11 Niigelsbach, Narlihomcrizchc TJicoloijir^ p. 71, who refers alpo tor>mmi, Gricchixchc Giittcrlchrr, p. 7.