Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 618

نازن

Defense of an Essay. &c.

Nov.

We saw above, that the ancestors of the chosen people, and the na- tions around them, had fallen into idolatry before the time of Abraham. These facts are referred to for the purpose of repelling the presump- tion which many seem to entertain that patriarchal tradition will prove so efficacious a means of transmitting this truth, that we shall, yea, must, find a knowledge of God (understanding this word pro priè) among every people, in the first records we have of their exis- tence as a nation. A calm consideration of the circumstances of the case, it seems to me, removes any such presumption, and produces on the contrary a conviction that we should come to the examina- tion of the early documents of any people, when we desire to learn what their religious creed was, with minds perfectly unbiased, and base our decision wholly upon the facts made known to us.

If we do this in the case of the Greeks and Romans, we shall, I think, con- clude that their knowledge of a monadic ✪ was owing, not to tradi- tion, but to their philosophy; or, at any rate, if derived from tradition, that this tradition was not handed down from the patriarchs, by their own ancestors, and recorded by their own poets and other early writers, but was gained by their philosophers at a comparatively modern date in their foreign travels.

If we take Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus as the oldest Greek au- thors whose productions have come down to us, how much do we find in these writers "of a Spiritual Being in and of himself” existing from eternity, the Creator of the world, and the Author of every- thing extrinsic to himself? "In the Homeric poems, Ocean is term- ed the origin of the gods and of all things, though Jupiter is commonly described as the Father of gods and men.”*

"Homer represents Father Oceanus as the generator of all things.”+ In what part of the Iliad or Odyssey shall we find a being called Osos who is superior to Zɛug, who is self-existent; the Creator of heaven and earth and ocean; of Zsʊs, and of all the gods?

"First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos; next Gæa, the broad, firm and flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus at her base. Eros (Love), the subduer of gods as well as men, came im- mediately afterwards. From Chaos sprung Erebus and Nyx; front these latter Æther and Hemera. Gæa also gave birth to Uranos, equal in breadth to herself, in order to serve both as an overarching vault to her, and as a residence for the inmortal gods; she further

* Thirlwall's History of Greece.

Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, Tom. II. quoted in Elton's Remains of lesiod.