By its own unaided wisdom, the ancient world could never comprehend the mystery of creation. The Mosaic writings were early rendered into Greek, and many critics, probably, before Longinus, felt and admired their sublimity; but they knew not what to make of these remarkable novelties, and the best of the Greeks and Romans never wrote as if they were at home in them. Nor could it well be otherwise, since their notions respecting the origin of man, as well as concerning the purpose of all knowledge, were so absurd. The grosser element of the human being, earth, occupied the chief consideration, while the spark of divinity in man was viewed as a theft from heaven, and the reward of successful knavery. Still less could they comprehend the mystery of redemption. Their consciousness with respect to God was thoroughly disorganized, and through thousands of years they oscillated between the lower and higher life in perpetual restlessness. They dwelt perpetually between atonement and thanksgiving, without one true and distinct comprehension of either. The smoke of sacrifice ascended from innumerable oblations perpetually renewed, but the effective sacrifice was never found, and the benighted worshiper still felt himself alienated from God. The heart of humanity bore an enigma which time and sense could never solve. Bunsen well states the facts as follows: "Christ put an end to this unhappy discord by the free and loving surrender of his own will to that of the Father; an act of life and death, in which Christ and the whole Christian Church throughout the world with Him, recognize the self-sacrifice of the Deity himself, and which philosophy (in other words, reason awakened to consciousness,) demands as an eternal act of God. Through this act of eternal love, the act of the Incarnate God, as many as believed in it, became recipients of the new spirit, of a new, divine, inward power. The inward consciousness of the eternal redeeming love of God (that is faith) imparted the capacity of feeling at one with God in spite of sin; for it gave men the power of severing sin, as an evil hostile element, from their real self, and therefore of freeing their life from that selfishness, which is the root of all evil in it. A free devotion to God and our brethren in thankful love now became possible--a devotion for God's sake, arising from a feeling of gratitude toward Him who first loved us. In the language of historical revelation this idea is thus expressed. The great atonement or _sin-offering_ of mankind was consummated by Christ, by means of his personal sacrifice: the great _thank-offering_ of mankind became possible through Christ, by means of the Spirit."