"ful: but became vain in their imagmat.ous, and ther foolish heart was darkened: professing themselves to be wise they became * fools; and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to "corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed "beasts, and creeping things." The philosopher in Egypt, compared with the rest of the world. one nation alone excepted.) might be called, in some respects, almost an enlightened He possessed traditions, as we have seen, which pointed, however obscurely, to the leading features of revelation:* namely, the total apostacy of man from his maker, and as a consequence, the necessity of reconciliation between earth and heaven by a vicarious atonement. He was aware, moreover, that the selfexistent God was before all worlds, and that man. in Him we live, and move, and have our "being." He knew that the vast frame of * Justyn Martyr complains that in his day the reading of the Sibylline prophecy, and some other writings of a similar nature, was forbidden on pain of death; a circumstance, he affirms, originating from demoniacal malignancy which feared the effect of truth, even obscurely revealed as it was, in these singular documents. Apol pro Christ. ii. p. 82. This seems, however, indisputably to prove that therein some trutha, and those too of a very important kind, were contained. nature was the work of His almighty hand, that from darkness light was originally produced, and that by the power of divine agency the whole universe was pervaded with motion and vitality. He was not entirely ignorant even of those sacred and incommunicable names appropriated to the all-glorious Creator; yet he was contented to serve the creature : be bowed his knee to the Baalim, who were none other than the monuments of the mercy and justice of the true God: he lifted up his eyes indeed towards heaven, but it was only to adore the luminary of day as an emblem of idols, or pay homage to the moon's pale crescent, which, typical as it was merely of the instrument of a world's preservation, was yet deemed by him a more exalted object than the invisible and holy One, who, with a word, had summoned the universe into existence! Thus, then, does it appear, that knowledge in the head, without a manifestation which touches and changes the heart, profiteth nothing. "The wisdom of the world is foolishness with "God;" and even St. Paul had well nigh addressed his Athenian audience in vain. We * Orphic. Hymn. Gesner. p. 377. Cudworth Int. Sys. lib. i. cap. 4. p. 414. Bryant on the Plagues of Egypt. p. 153. 1 may learn, therefore, the necessity, as well as the glory of a revelation, which displays God as the reconciled Father of his offending children; as the affectionate Saviour of every soul that accepts his proffered mercy: and as the ineffable Sanctifier, who changes the heart of man, translates him from a state of worse than chaotic darkness, into the glorious refulgence of the new creation, and hovers over the soul with dovelike pinions the author and source of life, and love, and holiness. Without such a revelation as this, what are the years of life with relation to eternity? Where is the boasted wisdom which once irradiated from the banks of the Nile? The sophists and philosophers, with thousands who listened to their lectures, and drank deep at the fountains of human learning, have all passed to their long home, the land of silence and forgetfulness. The sciences which many of them taught, as well as the opinions they supported, or the discoveries' they made, will be alike of no account amidst the conflagration of the universe, when all mankind shall stand on the same level before their Judge eternal! The ruins of Thebes and Memphis, formerly the grand centres, whence all that was wise and noble of a system unenlightened by revelation emanated, are now 1 objects only for melancholy research, and barely testify to the uninformed traveller, that such cities once existed. But there is a light in which they may be viewed as emblematic of the evidence afforded to the truth of the sacred oracles, by mythology. These are like a noble temple, majestic in their plan, and perfect in their several proportions; while divine inspiration burns within, as the hallowed fire upon the altar. The heathen had heard of this temple, and had even beheld parts of it; but in attempting to rear one similar, the glory of the original was forgotten, and enough alone remained to prove beyond all doubt, the previous existence and perfections of the model they had intended to imitate, but could not. Yet even this stolen imitation of the heavenly structure has fallenthe dromos-the pillar-the propylon-all is one vast cheerless ruin; and if here and there a column be found standing, cloud and darkness rest upon its capital! There is, however, a voice heard from the mighty wreck, which hypothetically lies before us;-It is the voice of tradition, and heard more perceptibly, from the surrounding silence of the scene whence it proceeds: and there is, too, at the same time, a grandeur and fading majesty hovering over these ruins of antiquity, at once both affecting and awful. Indeed, it could not have been chance that reared such a fabric; and the lines are yet discoverable of its likeness to the greater prototype after which it was designed, and doubtless for the collateral evidence of whose perfection it is even yet thus partially preserved: the form hath not yet lost All its original brightness; nor appears FINIS. J. CHILCOTT, Printer, 6, High Street, Bristol. |