Note (return) — Chapter XIV

Therefore the preparatory office of Greek religion and Greek philosophy is fully recognized by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He begins by saying that the observations he had made enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were indeed, in every respect, "a God-fearing people;"--that the God whom they knew so imperfectly as to designate Him "the Unknown," but whom "they worshipped," was the God he worshipped, and would now more fully declare to them. He assures them that their past history, and their present geographical position, had been the object of Divine foreknowledge and determination. "He hath determined beforehand the times of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation," all with this specific design, that they might "seek after," "feel after," and "find the Lord," who had never been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations of the divine, and he looked for their firmer delineation to the figure of that gracious Master, higher and holier than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and whom he was about to present to them." 860