For in him we live, and move, and have our being. — Better, we live, and are moved, and are. Each of the verbs used has a definite philosophical significance. The first points to our animal life; the second — from which is derived the Greek word used by ethical writers for passions, such as fear, love, hate, and the like — not, as the English verb suggests, to man’s power of bodily motion in space, but to our emotional nature; the third, to that which constitutes our true essential being, the intellect and will of man. What the words express is not merely the Omnipresence of the Deity; they tell us that the power for every act and sensation and thought comes from Him. They set forth what we may venture to call the true element of Pantheism, the sense of a “presence interposed,” as in nature, “in the light of setting suns,” so yet more in man. As a Latin poet had sung, whose works may have been known to the speaker, the hearers, and the historian: —
“Deum namque ire per omnes
Terras que tractusque maris, ccelumque profundum,
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas,
Scilicet hinc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri,
Omnia; nec morti esse locum sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum atque alto succedere cælo.”
[“God permeates all lands, all tracts of sea,
And the vast heaven. From Him all flocks and herds,
And men, and creatures wild, draw, each apart,
Their subtle life. To Him they all return,
When once again set free. No place is found
For death, but all mount up once more on high
To join the stars in their high firmament.”]
— Virg. Georg. iv. 221-225.
In the teaching of St. Paul, however, the personality of God is not merged, as in that of the Pantheist, in the thought of the great Soul of the World, but stands forth with awful distinctness in the character of King and Judge. Traces of like thoughts are found in the prophetic vision of a time when God shall be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28), the discords of the world’s history harmonised in the eternal peace.
As certain also of your own poets have said. — The quotation has a special interest as being taken from a poet who was a countryman of St. Paul’s. Aratus, probably of Tarsus (circ. B.C. 272), had written a didactic poem under the title of Phenomena, comprising the main facts of astronomical and meteorological science as then known. It opens with an invocation to Zeus, which contains the words that St. Paul quotes. Like words are found in a hymn to Zeus by Cleanthes (B.C. 300). Both passages are worth quoting: —
(1)
“From Zeus begin; never let us leave
His name unloved. With Him, with Zeus, are filled
All paths we tread, and all the marts of men;
Filled, too, the sea, and every creek and bay;
And all in all things need we help of Zeus,
For we too are his offspring.”
— Aratus, Phænom. 1–5.
(2)
“Most glorious of immortals, many-named,
Almighty and for ever, thee, O Zeus,
Sovran o’er Nature, guiding with thy hand
All things that are, we greet with praises. Thee
’Tis meet that mortals call with one accord,
For we thine offspring are, and we alone
Of all that live and move upon this earth,
Receive the gift of imitative speech.”
— Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus.
The fact of the quotation would at once quicken the attention of the hearers. They would feel that they had not to deal with an illiterate Jew, like the traders and exorcists who were so common in Greek cities, but with a man of culture like their own, acquainted with the thoughts of some at least of their great poets.
We are also his offspring. — We too often think of the quotation only as happily introduced at the time; but the fact that it was quoted shows that it had impressed itself, it may be, long years before, on St. Paul’s memory. As a student at Tarsus it had, we may well believe, helped to teach him the meaning of the words of his own Scriptures: “I have nourished and brought up children” (Isaiah 1:2). The method of St. Paul’s teaching is one from which modern preachers might well learn a lesson. He does not begin by telling men that they have thought too highly of themselves, that they are vile worms, creatures of the dust, children of the devil. The fault which he finds in them is that they have taken too low an estimate of their position. They too had forgotten that they were God’s offspring, and had counted themselves, even as the unbelieving Jews had done (Acts 13:46) “unworthy of eternal life.”