Knowledge of God before the Time of Christ. 187 View these nails with bitter pang, Hark! they mocke me too for crying. Was there ever paine like this? Lest thou, man, shouldst prove ingrat. From "Diuers Deuout and Zealous Meditations."—Harleian MSS. THE CROSSE OF CHRIST. Rise, O my soul, with thy desires to heaven, Thy time, where time's eternity is given; Ånd let vain thoughts no more my thoughts abuse, To thee my hands, to Thee my humble knees; To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice, To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees; To thee myself-myself and all, I give; To thee I die, to thee I only live.-Sir Walter Raleigh. KNOWLEDGE OF GOD BEFORE THE TIME OF CHRIST. Not a single philosopher had any idea of a God of such an exalted character, as to be the agent in the construction of the Universe, till Anaxagoras, the disciple of Hermotimus. This philosopher came to Athens in the year 456 before Christ, and first taught that the world was organized or constructed by some mind, or mental being, out of matter, which it was supposed, had always existed. Socrates, Plato, and others, adopted, illustrated, and adorned this opinion. Aristotle, on the contrary, supposed the world to have existed in its organized form eternally, and that the Supreme Being, who was co-existent, merely put it in motion. The Epicureans believed that a fortuitous concurrence of atoms was the origin of all things. Many were atheists; many were sceptics who doubted and assailed every system of opinions. Those who maintained the existence of a framer or architect of the world, (for no one believed in a creator of it,) supported the opinion of the existence of an animating principle in matter, which originated from the supreme architect, and which regulated the material system. Things of minor consequence, especially those which influenced the destiny of man, were referred by all classes, to the government of the gods, who were accordingly the objects of worship, and not the Supreme Architect. Paul gives a sufficiently favourable representation of this defective knowledge of God. (Rom. i. 19-24.) After all, it may be the subject of an inquiry, whether Anaxagoras or Hermotimus had not learnt some things respecting the God of the Hebrews from those Jews, who were sold as slaves by the Phoenicians, into Greece (Joel iii. 6); or from the Phoenicians themselves, who traded in Ionia and Greece; and whether these philosophers did not thus acquire that knowledge, which was thought to have originated with themselves. Perhaps they derived their notions of an Eternal Architect from the doctrine of the Persians respecting Hazaraum, or the endless succession of time, and Ormuz who acted the part of the creator of the world. However this may be, we observe on this topic, 1. That the Hebrews remained firm to their religion, before their acquaintance with Grecian philosophy, although many receded from it, after forming such an acquaintance. 2. The philosophic doctrine respecting the architect of the world rested on arguments of so subtle a kind, that they could not have been understood by the Jewish populace, and therefore, could not have been applied by them, to confirm their minds in religious truth. According to Cicero, De Naturá Deorum, lib. i. 6, such was the contention, even among the learned, with respect to the doctrine of the gods, that those who had the most strength and confidence on their side were compelled to doubt.-Dr. Jahn's Manual of Biblical Antiquities, pp. 362-3. CHRIST THE MORAL SAVIOUR." Baron Bunsen, whose Biblical Researches occupy so large a share of the public mind, stands at the furthest pole from those Christ the Moral Saviour. 189 who find no divine footsteps in the Gentile world. He believes in Christ, because he first believes in God and in mankind. In this he harmonizes with the Church Fathers before Augustin, and with all our deepest Evangelical schools. In handling the New Testament he remains faithful to his habit of exalting spiritual ideas, and the leading characters by whose personal impulse they have been stamped on the world. Other foundation for healthful mind or durable society, he suffers no man to lay, save that of Jesus, the Christ of God. In Him he finds brought to perfection that religious idea which is the thought of the Eternal, without conformity to which our souls cannot be saved from evil. He selects for emphasis such sayings as, "I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I would it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" In these he finds the innermost mind of the Son of Man, undimmed by the haze of mingled imagination and remembrance, with which his awful figure could scarcely fail to be at length invested by affection. The glimpses thus afforded us into the depth of our Lord's purpose, and his law of giving rather than of receiving, explain the wonder-working power with which he wielded the truest hearts of his generation, and correspond to his life and death of self-sacrifice. This recognition of Christ as the moral Saviour of mankind may seem to some Baron Bunsen's most obvious claim to the name of Christian.-Dr. Williams; Essays and Reviews. [Christian Charles Bunsen, the profound scholar, passed from among us, at a patriarchal age, at Bonn, on Nov. 28, 1860, and was buried on Dec. 1. The coffin was wreathed with evergreens, intermingled with garlands of flowers, most of them presented by friends; besides a bunch of flowers and a wreath which the Princess of Prussia had a few days previously sent to the Baron as a mark of sympathy and remembrance. The coffin being placed in the centre of the library, and the clergy and mourners having arrived, a favourite hymn of the Baron was played on the organ: the body was then borne by the handles by his sons, sonin-law, and secretaries, who were relieved by students of the University, and was thus carried to the grave, where the family and connexions of the deceased sprinkled earth upon the coffin: it was then left on the platform over the grave, covered with flowers, and not lowered to its last resting place till all the mourners had departed.] The End of the World`Foretold. AN epidemic terror of the end of the world has several times spread over the nation. The most remarkable was that which seized Christendom about the beginning of the eleventh century, when, in France, Germany, and Italy, fanatics preached that the thousand years prophesied in the Apocalypse as the term of the world's duration were about to expire, and that the Day of Judgment was at hand. This delusion was discouraged by the Church, but it spread rapidly among the people. The scene of the Last Judgment was expected to be at Jerusalem, where, in the year 1000, a host of pilgrims, smitten with terror as with a plague, awaited the coming of the Lord. There may," says Dr. Williams, "be a long future during which the present course of the world shall last. Instead of its drawing near the close of its existence, as represented in Millennarian or Rabbinical fables, and with so many more souls, according to some interpretations of the Gospel of Salvation, lost to Satan in every age and in every nation, than have been won to Christ, that the victory would evidently be on the side of the Fiend, we may yet be only at the commencement of the career of the great Spiritual Conqueror even in this world. Nor have we any right to say that the effects of what He does upon earth shall not extend and propagate themselves in worlds to come. But under any expectation of the duration of the present secular constitution, it is of the deepest interest to us, both as observers and as agents, placed evidently at an epoch when humanity finds itself under new conditions, to form some definite conception to ourselves of the way in which Christianity is henceforward to acupon the world which is our own."-Essays and Reviews. The Epistle of St. James, from his prophetical office, possesses a special interest from its conveying to us a picture of the end of the world. Dr. Wordsworth, in his Commentary upon this Epistle, says: "The last days of Jerusalem are, as we know from Christ Himself, prophetical and typical of the last days of the world. The sins of tho last days of Jerusalem will be the sins of the last days of the world. The End of the World foretold. 191 Hollow professions of religion, empty shows and shadows of faith, partiality and respect of persons, slavish idolatry of riches, observance of some of God's commandments, with open and impious defiance of others; arrogant assumption of the office of religious teaching, without due call and authority; encouragement and patronage of those who set themselves up to be spiritual guides; sins of the tongue, evil speaking against man and God; envying and strife, factious and party feuds, wars and fightings; adulteries, pride, and revelry; low worldliness, and presumptuous self-confidence; a Babel-like building up of secular plans and projects, independently of God's will, and against it; vainglorious display of wealth; hardheartedness towards those by whose industry that wealth is acquired; self-indulgence and sensuality; an obstinate continuance in that evil temper of unbelief which rejected and crucified Christ :-these were the sins of the last days of Jerusalem as described by St. James; for these she was to be destroyed by God; for these she was destroyed; and her children were scattered abroad, and have now been outcasts for near two thousand years. Here is a prophetic picture of the world's state in the last days. Here is a prophetic warning to men and nations, especially to wealthy commercial nations in the last times." The following eloquent exposition of this great question is abridged from the Saturday Review, April 14th, 1860: The belief that all human affairs will at some time or other be terminated by one tremendous dramatic catastrophe-that the whole history of the human race leads up to that result, and that the epoch at which it will take place is capable of being foretold -commends itself so powerfully to the imagination of mankind, and is met with under so many different forms in various countries and at various epochs of human history, that it is well worth while to consider what are the natural foundations on which it rests. It is most unquestionably true that, in times and countries where there has been any intellectual activity at all, men have shown a disposition to attribute to the history of the human race a sort of dramatic unity. Traces of this tendency are to be found in the classical visions of ages of gold, silver, brass, and iron-in the Hindoo cycles and avatars-in the ancient Rabbinical traditions to which a certain number of idle pretenders to learning still profess to attach importance in our own days-and in the eagerness with which the Christian world has in all ages deduced from the Bible, not merely the general doctrine (which is not discussed here) that the present dispensation will conclude at a given time, and in a visible and, so to speak, dramatic manner, but the specific opinion that that final consummation was at hand on many different occasions. Every one knows that certain classes of society in the present day receive the expressions of this opinion not only with favour, but with a sort of avidity; and most of us are probably aware that at particular periods-as, for example, at the beginning of the eleventh century-the conviction that the end of the world was actually approaching, prevailed so universally as to produce very serious effects indeed upon the current business |