Note (return) — Chapter XV

To develop this innate desire and "feeling after God" was the grand design of providence in "fixing the times" of the Greek nation, and "the boundaries of their habitation." 930 Man was brought, through a period of discipline, to feel his need of a personal relation to God. He was made to long for a realizing sense of his presence--to desire above all things a Father, a Counsellor, and a Friend--a living ear into which he might groan his anguish, or hymn his joy; and a living heart that could beat towards him in compassion, and prompt immediate succor and aid. The idea of a pure Spiritual Essence without form, and without emotion, pervading all, and transcending all, is too vague and abstract to yield us comfort, and to exert over us any persuasive power. "Our moral weakness shrinks from it in trembling awe. The heart can not feed on sublimities. We can not make a home of cold magnificence; we can not take immensity by the hand." 931 Hence the need and the desire that God shall condescendingly approach to man, and by some manifestation of himself in human form, and through the sensibilities of the human heart, commend himself to the heart of man--in other words, the need of an Incarnation. Thus did the education of our race, by the dispensation of philosophy, prepare the way for him who was consciously or unconsciously "the Desire of Nations," and the deepening earnestness and spiritual solicitude of the heathen world heralded the near approach of Him who was not only "the Hope of Israel" but "the Saviour of the world."