ing forward to a glorious future
destined to surpass it."[851]

[Footnote 850: Romans, IX 4-6.]

[Footnote 851: Pressense, "Religions before Christ," p. 202.]

Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to the lot of
history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emancipating law of
_gradual progress_.[852] Christianity was preceded by ages of
preparation, in which we have a gradual development of religious phrases
and ideas, of forms of social life and intellectual culture, and of
national and political institutions most favorable to its advent and its
promulgation; and "in the fullness of time"--the maturity and fitness of
the age--"God sent his own Son into the world."

[Footnote 852: "System of Doctrine," p. 73.]

This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism. The divine
plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its provisions are made in
view of the wants of all the race; and we must therefore believe that
the entire history of the race, previous to the coming of the Redeemer,
was under a divine supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of
our world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization must
therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and they must
stand in an important relation to Christianity. He who "determined the
time of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries
of their habitation in order that they may seek the Lord," can not have
been unmindful of the Greek nation, and of its grandest age of
philosophy. "The Father of the spirits of all flesh" could not be
unconcerned in the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children.
He was as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is the
God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies are over all
his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be the agent of his
providence in one special field, and if the Jewish theocracy was one
grand instrument of preparatory discipline, it was simply because,
through these, God designed to bless all the nations of the earth. And
surely no one will presume to say that a civilization and an
intellectual culture which was second only to the Hebrew, and, in some
of its aspects, even in advance of the Hebrew, was not determined and
supervised by Divine Providence, and made subservient to the education
and development of the whole race. The grand results of Hebrew
civilization were appropriated and assimilated by Christia