44 The Fundamentals ster stones four hundred feet in the air, and adjust them to a mathematical line and not vary half a hair’s breadth; “that could paint on glass, grind gold to dust, embalm the body so as to make flesh immortal;” that built gigantic houses of stone that have outlived all nations and civilizations—this na tion was wise in all the Wisdom of this World. And yet this grand old civilization lived and died in gross and utter ignor ance of the one true and living God. The religion of the wisest men of On and Memphis “was Negritian fetishism, the lowest kind of Nature worship”. The people bowed down and worshipped the Nile, the ox, the trees, the hills, and “birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things”. Egypt had wise priests, her magnificent temples, her gorgeous worship; but alas! all was of the earth, earthy. She knew not God; and her wise men, Jannes and Jambres, withstood Moses when he came to them with a message from the Living One, in whom they lived and moved, and had their being. No Won der that the people were “liars and thieves, sensual and treach erous;” with all their wisdom they knew not God. Subsequent to Egypt there arose four great world pow ers, following each other in succession, claiming and exercis ing universal dominion, and gathering unto themselves the civilization and glory of the known world—Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. Four kingdoms seen in dream by the great Nebuchadnezzar — the image with the head of gold, breast of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, feet partly of iron and part of clay, and interpreted by Daniel as the four king doms above named. But alas! not one or all of these nations ever attained unto that knowledge of God which is life eternal. The bricks of Babylon, the purple of Tyre, the army of Xerxes, the conquests of Alexander, the legions of Rome, the poetry of Homer, the philosophy of Socrates, the statues of Phidias, the orations of Cicero, the satires of Juvenal, the annals of Tacitus—these are the drifts from the waves of that ancient civilization, wise in all the Wisdom of this World;
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