as the Son of God? If he was divine, there must be two Gods; if not, his
worship was no better than the vulgar worships of the dead. In either
case, there seemed to be no escape from the charge of polytheism.

[Sidenote: (2) with the philosophers.]

The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the
unity of God, which was not only taught by Jews and Christians, but
generally admitted by serious heathens. The philosophers spoke of a dim
Supreme far off from men, and even the polytheists were not unwilling to
subordinate their motley crew of gods to some mysterious divinity beyond
them all. So far there was a general agreement. But underneath this
seeming harmony there was a deep divergence. Resting on a firm basis of
historic revelation, Christianity could bear record of a God who loved
the world and of a Redeemer who had come in human flesh. As this coming
is enough to show that God is something more than abstract perfection
and infinity, there is nothing incredible in a real incarnation, or in a
real trinity inside the unity of God. But the heathen had no historic
revelation of a living hope to sustain him in that age of failure and
exhaustion. Nature was just as mighty, just as ruthless then as now, and
the gospel was not yet the spring of hope it is in modern life. In our
time the very enemies of the cross are living in its light, and drawing
at their pleasure from the well of Christian hope. It was not yet so in
that age. Brave men like Marcus Aurelius could only do their duty with
hopeless courage, and worship as they might a God who seemed to refuse
all answer to the great and bitter cry of mankind. If he cares for men,
why does he let them perish? The less he has to do with us, the better
we can understand our evil plight. Thus their Supreme was far beyond the
weakness of human sympathy. They made him less a person than a thing or
an idea, enveloped in clouds of mysticism and abolished from the world