Paul’s estimate of heathen character was that of a man who, aside from his direct inspiration, spoke from a wide range of observation.  He was a philosopher by education, and he lived in an age and amid national surroundings which afforded the broadest knowledge of men, of customs, of religious faiths, of institutions.  Trained as a Jew, dealing constantly with the most enlightened heathen, persecuting the Christians, and then espousing their cause, his preparation for a broad, calm, and unerring judgment of the character of the Gentile nations was complete; and his one emphatic verdict was apostasy.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 125:  Fiske:  The Destiny of Man, pp. 78-80.]

[Footnote 126:  We do not care to enter the field of pre-historic speculation where the evolution of religion from totemism or fetishism claims to find its chief support.  We are considering only the traditional development of the ancient faiths of man.]

[Footnote 127:  Introduction to Christian Theology, Appendix, pp. 166, 167.]

[Footnote 128:  Ebrard’s Apologetics, vols. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 129:  Modern Atheism, p. 13.]

[Footnote 130:  The Chinese, pp. 163, 164.]

[Footnote 131:  Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i., p. 23.]

[Footnote 132:  Professor Banergea (see Indian Antiquary, February, 1875) thinks that this Hindu account of creation shows traces of the common revelation made to mankind.]

[Footnote 133:  Science of Religion, p. 99.]

[Footnote 134:  Science of Religion, p. 88.]

[Footnote 135:  “The ancient relics of African faith are rapidly disappearing at the approach of Mohammedan and Christian missionaries; but what has been preserved of it, chiefly through the exertions of learned missionaries, is full of interest to the student of religion, with its strange worship of snakes and ancestors, its vague hope of a future life, and its not altogether faded reminiscence of a Supreme God, the Father of the black as well as of the white man.”—­Science of Religion, p. 39.]

[Footnote 136:  While he maintains that the idea of God must have preceded that of gods, as the plural always implies the singular, he yet claims very justly that the exclusive conception of monotheism as against polytheism could hardly have existed.  Men simply thought of God as God, as a child thinks of its father, and does not even raise the question of a second.—­See Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i., p. 349.]

[Footnote 137:  St. Augustine, in quoting Cyprian, shows that the fathers of the Church looked upon Plato as a monotheist.  The passage is as follows:  “For when he (Cyprian) speaks of the Magians, he says that the chief among them, Hostanes, maintains that the true God is invisible, and that true angels sit at His throne; and that Plato agrees with this and believes in one God, considering the others to be demons; and that Hermes Trismegistus also speaks of one God, and confesses that He is incomprehensible.”  Angus., De Baptismo contra Donat., Lib.  VI., Cap.  XLIV.]