but drew from certain veins of Divine Providence running throughout, and which they perversely and wrongfully abuse to the service of demons.  These, the Christian, when he severs himself from their wretched fellowship, ought to take from them for the right use of preaching of the Gospel.  For what else have many excellent members of our faith done?  See we not how richly laden with gold and silver and apparel that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, Cyprian, departed out of Egypt?  Or Lactantius, or Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary, not to speak of the living, and Greeks innumerable?  And this, Moses himself, that most faithful servant of God, first did, of whom it is written, that ‘he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.’”

Let us for a moment pause and see of what these treasures of Egypt consisted, and especially what Plato taught concerning God.  Like Socrates, he ridiculed the absurd but popular notion that the gods could be full of human imperfections, could make war upon each other, could engage in intrigues, and be guilty of base passions.  And he earnestly maintained that it was demoralizing to children and youth to hold up such beings as objects of worship.  Such was his condemnation of what he considered false gods.  He was equally opposed to the idea that there is no God.  “All things,” he says, “are from God, and not from some spontaneous and unintelligent cause.”  “Now, that which is created,” he adds, “must of necessity be created by some cause—­but how can we find out the Father and maker of all this universe?  If the world indeed be fair, and the artificer good, then He must have looked to that which is external—­for the world is the fairest of creatures, as He is the best of causes.”

Plato’s representation of the mercy of God, of his providential care, of his unmixed goodness, of his eternal beauty and holiness—­are well-nigh up to the New Testament standard.  So is also his doctrine of the immortality of the soul.  The fatal deficiency is that he does not know.  He has received no divine revelation.  “We will wait,” he said in another passage, “for one, be it a god or a god-inspired man, to teach us our religious duties, and as Athene in Homer says to Diomede, to take away the darkness from our eyes.”  And in still another place he adds:  “We must lay hold of the best human opinion in order that, borne by it as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous sea of life, unless we can find a stronger boat, or some word of God which will more surely and safely carry us."[26]

There is a deep pathos in the question which I have just quoted, “How can we find out the Father and maker of all this universe?” And in the last sentence quoted, Plato seems to have felt his way to the very threshold of the revelation of Christ.[27]