Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 (Justin Martyr, Tatian)

Their very mistakes allow us to place a higher value on the superiority of inspired writers. They were no wiser than the naturalists of their day, who taught them the history of the Phoenix A mythical bird; the Fathers often used it as a metaphor for resurrection. and other fables, but nothing of this sort is found in Scripture. The Fathers are inferior in kind as well as in degree, yet their words are lingering echoes of those whose words were spoken "as the Spirit gave them utterance." They are monuments to the power of the Gospel. They were fashioned from such material as St. Paul describes when he says, "Such were some of you." Were it not for Christ, they would have been worshippers of personified Lust, Hate, and every crime. They would have lived for "bread and circus-shows" A phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, referring to the Roman public's distraction by free grain and entertainment.. Yet, to the contemporaries of Juvenal, they taught the Decalogue The Ten Commandments. and the Sermon on the Mount. Among such beasts in human form, they built the sacred home; they created the Christian family; they gave new and holy meanings to the names of wife and mother; they imparted ideas, previously unknown, regarding the dignity of man as man; they infused an atmosphere of benevolence and love; they bestowed the elements of liberty tempered by law; they sanctified human society by proclaiming the universal brotherhood of redeemed man. In short, as we read the Apostolic Fathers, we grasp the meaning of St. Paul when he said prophetically—a statement men were slow to believe—

"The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. . . . But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to nothing things that are."

DECEMBER, 1884.

A. C. C.