[Footnote 20: _The Norsemen_, Maclear.]
[Footnote 21: The Druid bard Taliesen says: "Christ, the Word from the
beginning, was from the beginning our teacher, and we never lost His
teaching. Christianity was a new thing in Asia, but there never was a
time when the Druids of Britain held not its doctrines."--_St. Paul in
Britain_, p. 86.]
[Footnote 22: Uhlhorn's _Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism_.]
[Footnote 23: The same dualism of the male and the female principle is
found in the Shinto of Japan. See Chamberlain's translation of the
_Kojiki_.]
[Footnote 24: The late George Eliot has given expression to this grim
solace, and Mr. John Fiske, in his _Destiny of Man_, claims that the
goal of all life, from the first development of the primordial cell, is
the perfected future man.]
[Footnote 25: Voltaire found great delight in the so-called _Ezour
Veda_, a work which claimed to be an ancient Veda containing the
essential truths of the Bible. The distinguished French infidel was
humbled, however, when it turned out that the book was the pious fraud
of a Jesuit missionary who has hoped thus to win the Hindus to
Christianity.]
[Footnote 26: Quoted by Uhlhorn in _The Conflict of Christianity with
Heathenism_, p. 70. He also quotes Seneca as saying: "Oh, if one only
might have a guide to truth!"]
[Footnote 27: Plato showed by his writings and his whole life that he
was a true seeker after the knowledge of God, whom he identified with
the highest good. Though he believed in an efficient creatorship, he
held that matter is eternal. Ideas are also eternal, but the world is
generated. He was not a Pantheist, as he clearly placed God outside of,
or above, the universe. He regarded the soul of man as possessed of
reason, moral sensibility, and appetite.
On the doctrine of future immortality Plato was most emphatic.
He also believed that the soul in a previous state had been pure and
sinless, but had fallen. He taught that recovery from this fallen
condition is to be accomplished by the pursuit of philosophy and the
practice of virtue (not as merit but as discipline), by contemplating
the highest ideal which is the character of God, and by thinking of
eternity. Plato regarded suffering as disciplinary when properly
improved. True philosophy may raise the soul above the fear of death.
This was proved by Socrates. Both Socrates and Plato seemed to believe
in a good demon (spirit) whose voice was a salutary and beneficent
guide. As to eschatology, Plato looked forward to a heaven where the
virtuous soul shall dwell in the presence of God, and in the enjoyment
of pure delights.
Aristotle's idea of God was scarcely less exalted than that of Plato. He
expressed it thus: "The principle of life is in God; for energy of mind
constitutes life, and God is this energy. He, the first mover, imparts
motion and pursues the work of creation as something that is loved. His
course of life must be similar to what is most excellent in our own
short career. But he exists forever in this excellence, whereas this is
impossible for us. His pleasure consists in the exercise of his
essential energy, and on this account vigilance, wakefulness, and
perception are most agreeable to him. Again, the more we examine God's
nature the more wonderful does it appear to us. He is an eternal and
most excellent being. He is indivisible, devoid of parts, and having no
magnitude, for God imparts motion through infinite time, and nothing
finite, as magnitude is, can have an infinite capacity. He is a being
devoid of passions and unalterable."--Quoted in _Indian Wisdom_, p.
125.]
[Footnote 28: "Those pages present not the image of this piety, the
tears of confession, Thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a
contrite heart, the salvation of the people, the Bridal city, the
earnest of the Holy Ghost, the cup of our redemption. No man sings
there, 'Shall not my soul be submitted unto God? for of Him cometh my
salvation, for He is my God and my salvation, my guardian, I shall no
more be grieved.' No one there hears Him call 'Come unto me all ye that
labor.'"--_Confessions_, Bk. vii., xxi. "But having then read those
books of the Platonists, and thence being taught to search for
incorporeal truth, I saw Thy invisible things, understood by the things
which are made; and though cast back, I perceived what that was which,
through the darkness of my mind, I was hindered from contemplating,
being assured 'that Thou wert and wert infinite, and yet not diffused in
space, finite or infinite, and that Thou truly art who art the same
ever, in no part nor motion varying; and that all other things are from
Thee.... Of these things I was assured, yet too insecure to enjoy Thee.
I prated as one skilled, but I had not sought Thy way in Christ our
Saviour; I had proved to be not skilled but killed."--_Confessions_, Bk.
vii., xx.]
[Footnote 29: We may judge of the bearing of the common term heathen as
applied to non-Christian nations, when we consider that the Greeks and
Romans characterized all foreigners as "barbarians," that Mohammedans
call all Christians "infidels," and the Chinese greet them as "foreign
devils." The missionary enterprise as a work of conciliation should
illustrate a broader spirit.]
[Footnote 30: _The Celts_, Maclear.]
[Footnote 31: _Lives of the Fathers_, Farrar.]
[Footnote 32: "Christianity," says Max Müller, "enjoyed no privileges
and claimed no immunities when it boldly confronted and confounded the
most ancient and the most powerful religions of the world. Even at
present it craves no mercy and it receives no mercy from those whom our
missionaries have to meet face to face in every part of the world; and
unless our religion has ceased to be what it was, its defenders should
not shrink from this new trial of its strength, but should encourage
rather than depreciate the study of comparative theology."--_Science of
Religion_, p. 22.]
[Footnote 33: _History of Christian Theology_, Vol. I., p. 52.]