Jews a
stumbling-block and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are
called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God, and the wisdom of
God. The Jews, while they require a sign, did not perceive that
miracles, in themselves, were not adopted to produce affection. And the
Greeks, while they sought after wisdom, did not perceive that all the
wisdom of the Gentiles, would never work love in the heart. But the
apostle preached--Christ crucified--an exhibition of self-denial, of
suffering, and of self-sacrificing; love and mercy, endured in behalf of
men, which, when received by faith, became "The power of God, and the
wisdom of God," to produce love and obedience in the human soul. Paul
understood the efficacy of the Cross. He looked to Calvary and beheld
Christ crucified as the Sun of the Gospel system. Not, as the Moon,
reflecting cold and borrowed rays; but as the Sun of righteousness,
glowing with radiant mercy, and pouring warm beams of life and love into
the open bosom of the believer.

It is stranger that among philosophers of succeeding ages there has not
been wisdom sufficient to discover, from the constitutional necessities
of the human spirit, that demand for the instruction and aid of the
Messiah which Socrates and Plato discovered, even in a comparatively
dark age. And in the whole history of human mind there is not a more
instructive chapter at once stranger and sad, interesting to our
curiosity and mortifying to our pride, than the history of Platonic
philosophy sinking into gnosticism, or in other words, of Greek
philosophy merging in Oriental Mysticism; showing, on the one hand the
decline and fall of philosophy, and, on the other, the rise and progress
of Syncretism. Perhaps, also, it is the most remarkable instance on
record, that out of the religious, moral, and political, in one word,
the intellectual corruption which brings on the fall of great and mighty
nations, as it doubtless was with Babylon and Thebes, and so we know it
to have been with Athens and Rome, God's providence educes pure
principles and higher hopes for the nations and people that rise out of
their ashes, and who, if they will be taught wisdom and principle,
righteousness and peace, by the errors and sufferings of those who have
preceded them, may rise to higher destinies in the history of men's
conduct and God's providence.

The reader most sincerely is asked to devote the required time in any
public library and st