Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

360 THE FORMATION OF CHI:ISTENJ)OA1which we have been tracing, we shall see that thegreat preacher pointed out to his hearers exactly whatwas wanting in their conception of God and man.He knitted the unity of God with His Creatorship,and deduced from the latter the entire dependence ofman on God, and the absolute sovereignty of God,which is the counterpart of this dependence. Thenfollowed the unity of the human race, and the unfailingprovidence of God, encompassing every creature wholives, moves, and has in him the being derived fromHim, and every nation, which, wherever it may dwellover the face of the whole earth, only occupies theboundaries predetermined for it by the Creator. Agreat defect degraded the conception of God entertainedby Greek philosophy from its beginning to itsend. This statement of man's creatorship at oncestruck at that defect whilst it also contained in itselfthe censure of that gross idolatry to which both Stoicsand Epicureans in their practice showed themselvesbasely subservient, an idolatry afterwards patronisedby Plotinus and his followers. For the God whocreates is a jealous God, who will not give Hisglory to another; but the pantheistic god of forceadmits all forces as parts of itself into its universalbosom. St. Paul likewise by the simple statementof God's absolute lordship over all, who were allequally His creatures, cut the root of that arrogationof superiority for one race over another which wasfostered alike by the Greek pride of mind, and theRoman pride of dominion, and established therebyquite another bond between men than that devisedby the Stoic fiction of the divine reason dwelling inman. Then he drew the practical conclusion fromthis. God had given the nations knowledge of Himself