Phidias and His Name

“Like Phidias, who in his image carved his own 7iame, there is God engraveji upon every creatureP Not in characters of human writing is it written, but in the character of the work. Phidias needed not to have written the word PHIDIAS in so many letters, for the master’s hand had a cunning of its own which none could counterfeit. An instructed person had only to look at a statue and say at once, “Phidias did this, for no other hand could have chiselled such a countenance “; and believers have only to look either at creation, providence, or the divine word, and they will cry instinctively, “This is the finger of God.” Yet, alas, man has great powers of wilful blindness, and these are aided by the powers of darkness, so that, being both blind and in the dark, man is unable to see his God, though his presence is as clear as that of the sun in the heavens.