Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
Systematic Theology (Volume 1 of 3)
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
Baptists -- Doctrines; Theology, Doctrinal
The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression
of their life we “must look beneath the surface, in the soul,
where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face
with God” (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 28). But the Hebrew
religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason,
and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of
knowledge, and the æsthetic sense. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek
Genius, 34—“The Phœnicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it
was the Greeks who wrote.” Aristotle was the beginner of science,
and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the
scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by
striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would
never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not
been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has
contributed her constitutional government, and America her manhood
suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God
is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to
every other. _Acts 17:26_—God “made of one every nation of men to
dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their
appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; _Rom.
3:12—_“What advantage then hath the Jew?... first of all, that
they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” God’s choice of the
Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious
truth, is analogous to his choice of other nations, as the
repositories and communicators of æsthetic, scientific,
governmental truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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