Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/19

. With growing power of thought and imagination their successive generations developed language, song, and art—notably that of building—during thousands or myriads of years, over all central and southwestern Asia and northeastern Africa. Of their religion, at first heaven-derived and spiritual, we have remains in the early Hebrew Scriptures and in the sacred books of India, Persia, Egypt, and Turkestan. On the remains of their language all our modern languages are based. Of their prowess in building, the rock-temples of India and the pyramids of Egypt bear enduring witness, though of the period of religious decadence. Of their art the remains left in Greece by a late offshoot of the same stock, are still unequalled by modern genius. Grecian art and philosophy with Roman statesmanship have furnished the basis of modern civilization, as the Gospel of our Lord has furnished the inspiration—even as we see exemplified in the evolution of the heaven-aspiring Christian cathedral.

In the discriminating thought of this Ancient Church at its best estate it distinguished and reverenced divers attributes of the Deity. In its