rruptible
man,.... and they worshipped and served the thing made, para--_rather_
than, or _more_ than the Creator." Here, then, the apostle intimates,
first, that the heathen _knew_ God,[154] and that they worshipped God.
They worshipped the creature besides or even more than God, but still
they also worshipped God. And, secondly, they represented the
perfections of God by an image, and under this, as a "_likeness_" or
symbol, they indirectly worshipped God. Their religious system was,
then, even to the eye of Paul, a _symbolic_ worship--that is, the
objects of their devotion were the _omoiomata_--the similitudes, the
likenesses, the images of the perfections of the invisible God.

[Footnote 154: Verse 21.]

It is at once conceded by us, that the "sensus numinis," the natural
intuition of a Supreme Mind, whose power and presence are revealed in
nature, can not maintain itself, as an influential, and vivifying, and
regulative belief amongst men, without the continual supernatural
interposition of God; that is, without a succession of Divine
revelations. And further, we grant that, instead of this symbolic mode
of worship deepening and vitalizing the sense of God as a living power
and presence, there is great danger that the symbol shall at length
unconsciously take the place of God, and be worshipped instead of Him.
From the purest form of symbolism which prevailed in the earliest ages,
there may be an inevitable descent to the rudest form of false worship,
with its accompanying darkness, and abominations, and crimes; but, at
the same time, let us do justice to the religions of the ancient
world--the childhood stammerings of religious life--which were something
more than the inventions of designing men, or the mere creations of
human fancy; they were, in the words of Paul, "a _seeking after God_, if
haply they might feel after him, and find him, who is not far from any
one of us." It can not be denied that the more thoughtful and
intelligent Greeks regarded the visible objects of their devotion as
mere symbols of the perfections and operations of the unseen God, and of
the invisible powers and subordinate agencies which are employed by him
in his providential and moral government of the world. And whatever
there was of misapprehension and of "ignorance" in the popular mind, we
have the assurance of Paul that it was "_overlooked_" by God.

The views here presented will, we venture to believe, be found most in
harmony w