Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURAL ORDER 41!natural circumstances, or previous preparation of me:by their civil condition. They did not spring from thunion of Oriental with Western civilisation. Suchunion Philosophy could have brought about, if aidedby the powerful bond of a common civil government.Philosophy indeed tried what it could do, but failedignominiously either to establish belief in one God, orto destroy the worship of a thousand idols. Again, Ihave shown that the introduction and establishment ofthese principles were completed as a fact of historybefore the accession of the Teutonic nations to theChurch. Thus the belief in an abiding human personalitywith all its immense consequences was fullyfelt and acknowledged and carried out into practiceby teachers in their doctrine, by confessors in theirlife, by martyrs in the tortures which they bravedbefore a single German tribe had been taught thedignity of human nature by its introduction into thegreat Christian society. The sense of the personaldignity of man, the sense of the rights of the individual,was not the result of the fusion of the natural qualitiesof the Teuton with the Christian spirit. In Basil, andGregory, and Athanasius, and Jerome, and Augustine,and in whole generations of Christian men and womenwho preceded them, we see this sense complete andperfect. It was the gift of our Lord to His people byHis doctrine, when He said, " What shall it profit a manto gain the whole world and to lose his own soul;" byHis act when He gave up His body to the extreme oftorment and humiliation, and when He raised it to lifeagain from the Cross.