Acts 17:26

And hath made of one blood all nations of men. — Literally, every nation. The previous verses had given what we may venture to call St. Paul’s Philosophy of Religion. This gives his Philosophy of History. And the position was one which no Greek, above all, no Athenian, was likely to accept. For him the distinction between the Greek and the barbarian was radical and essential. The one was by nature meant to be the slave of the other. (Aristot. Pol. i. 2, 6.) In rising above his own prejudices of fancied superiority of race, the Apostle felt that he could attack, as from a vantage-ground, the prejudices of others. He naturally accepted the truth as it was presented to him in the Mosaic history of the Creation; but the truth itself, stated in its fullest form, would remain, even if we were to accept other theories of the origin of species and the history of man. There is a oneness of physical structure, of conditions and modes of life, of possible or actual development, which forbids any one race or nation, Hebrew, Hellenic, Latin, or Teutonic, to assume for itself that it is the cream and flower of humanity.

Hath determined the times before appointed. — The better MSS. give simply, “the appointed seasons.” Few words, even in St. Paul’s teaching, are more pregnant with significance. They justify all that the wise of heart have said as to the “manifold wisdom of God,” as seen in history and in the education of mankind. The special gifts of character of each race — Hebrew thought of God, Greek sense of beauty, Roman sense of law, Teutonic truthfulness, Keltic impulsiveness, Negro docility — have all their work to do. All local circumstances of soil and climate that influence character come under the head of the “bounds of men’s habitation.” All conditions of time — the period at which each race has been called to play its part in the drama of the world’s history — come under the head of the “appointed seasons.”