REVELATION AND REASON. 11 



of the Divinity was in a great measure overlooked; and man, in 

 place of elevating himself to the Deity, brought down God to the 

 level of his own nature, and deified his passions, and even his 

 crimes. Thus the Theologists of early Greece* made Gods of Virtue, 

 Honour, Liberty, Victory, Piety, Concord, Death, Fear, and Lust; 

 and these Divinities had statues and temples in the proudest days 

 of imperial Home and of intellectual Greece ; proving most clearly 

 that the philosophy of reason had failed to discover, even remotely, 

 God, as He has revealed Himself to us ; and that men whose names 

 have descended to modern times, as examples of virtue and wisdom, 

 were as ignorant in this point as the untaught Indian who 



" Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." 



Yet had these men, so highly endowed, all the helps of Natural 

 Theology and tradition, and searched as anxiously, and speculated as 

 abstrusely, upon the phenomena of the material world, as the most 

 enthusiastic Natural Theologist of modern times. 



The remark upon which we have thus at length commented 

 namely, " that the friends of Revelation have been known without 

 due reflection to contend, that, by the light of unassisted reason 

 alone, we can absolutely know nothing of God ami of a future 

 state," is followed by his Lordship with many ingenious arguments, 

 to show, that without the aid of reason employed in developing the 

 existence and attributes of God, we should be in danger of lapsing 

 from Revelation. Reason has been given to us, undoubtedly, to be 

 employed in the noblest of all pursuits that of inquiring after Divine 

 things ; and therefore we would have it so exercised : but we again 

 repeat that, in speaking of reason, we speak of it as being acquainted 

 with Revelation ; and that, consequently, all inquiries (if Reve- 

 lation be true) tend to one point namely, to strengthen and illustrate 

 Scriptural record; and in this way the use of natural reason, when 

 employed in the search after natural religion, is to be encouraged. 

 The lamp of science, in the hand of a believer in Revelation, is 

 perpetually guiding us to some new proof of the unity and wisdom 

 of the Creator ; but when Lord Brougham declares, " that it is a 



* Vide the Theology of the ancient Grecians, as exhibited in the Iliad 

 and Odyssey. 



