Most glorious of the immortal Powers above!O thou of many names! mysterious Jove:For evermore almighty! Nature's source!Thou governest all things in their order'd course!All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,Echo thy being with reflected birth--Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:The universe, that rolls this globe around,Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;The double-forked and ever-living fire;In thy unconquerable hands they glow,And at the flash all nature quakes below.Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation drawTo one immense, inevitable law:And, with the various mass of breathing souls,Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.Dread genius of creation! all things bowTo thee: the universal monarch thou!Nor aught is done without thy wise control,On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind,Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight,Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.Thy hand, educing good from evil, bringsTo one apt harmony the strife of things.One ever-during law still binds the whole,Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.Wretches! while still they course the glittering prizeThe law of God eludes their ears and eyes.Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey;But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray.Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,And the sweet pleasures of the body please.With eager haste they rush the gulf within,And their whole souls are centred in their sin.But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven!Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;Wherewith thy justice governs all below.Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,Shall men that honor to thyself repay;And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be,Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.839
Most glorious of the immortal Powers above!O thou of many names! mysterious Jove:For evermore almighty! Nature's source!Thou governest all things in their order'd course!All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,Echo thy being with reflected birth--Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:The universe, that rolls this globe around,Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;The double-forked and ever-living fire;In thy unconquerable hands they glow,And at the flash all nature quakes below.Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation drawTo one immense, inevitable law:And, with the various mass of breathing souls,Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.Dread genius of creation! all things bowTo thee: the universal monarch thou!Nor aught is done without thy wise control,On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind,Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight,Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.Thy hand, educing good from evil, bringsTo one apt harmony the strife of things.One ever-during law still binds the whole,Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.Wretches! while still they course the glittering prizeThe law of God eludes their ears and eyes.Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey;But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray.Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,And the sweet pleasures of the body please.With eager haste they rush the gulf within,And their whole souls are centred in their sin.But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven!Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;Wherewith thy justice governs all below.Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,Shall men that honor to thyself repay;And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be,Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.839
Most glorious of the immortal Powers above!
O thou of many names! mysterious Jove:
For evermore almighty! Nature's source!
Thou governest all things in their order'd course!
All hail to thee! since, innocent of blame,
E'en mortal creatures may address thy name;
For all that breathe, and creep the lowly earth,
Echo thy being with reflected birth--
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound:
The universe, that rolls this globe around,
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire;
The double-forked and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hands they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw
To one immense, inevitable law:
And, with the various mass of breathing souls,
Thy power is mingled, and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee: the universal monarch thou!
Nor aught is done without thy wise control,
On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind,
Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion, to thy sight,
Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life, then, were virtue, did they thus obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray.
Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are centred in their sin.
But, oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given!
Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven!
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father! disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know;
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honor to thyself repay;
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,
As well befits a mortal's lips to sing:
More blest, nor men, nor heavenly powers can be,
Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.839
Footnote 839:(return)Sir C. A. Elton's version, published in "Specimens of Ancient Poets," edited by William Peters, A. M., Christ Church, Oxford.
PSYCHOLOGY.
As in the world there are two principles, the passive and the active, so in the understanding there are two elements: a passive element--sensation, and an active element--reason.
All knowledge commences with the phenomena of sensation (αἴσθησις). This produces in the soul an image (φαντασία), which corresponds to the exterior object, and which Chrysippus regarded as a modification of the mind (ἀλλοίωσις).840
Associate with sensibility is thought--the faculty of general ideas--the ὀρθὸς λόγος, or right reason, as the supreme power and the guiding light of humanity. This active principle is of divine origin, "a part or shred of the Divinity."
Footnote 840:(return)Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. xxxiv.
This "right reason," or "common reason," is the source and criterion of all truth; "for our individual natures are all parts of the universal nature," and, therefore, all the dictates of "common reason" are "identical with that right reason which pervades every thing, being the same with Jupiter, who is the regulator and chief manager of all things."
The fundamental canon of the logic of the Stoics, therefore, was that "what appears to all, that is to be believed, for it is apprehended by the reason, which is common and Divine."
It is needless to remark that the Stoics were compelled by their physiological theory to deny the proper immortality of the soul. Some of them seem to have supposed that it might, for a season, survive the death of the body, but its ultimate destination was absorption into the Divine essence. It must return to its original source.
ETHICS.
If reason be the great organizing and controlling law of the universe, then, to live conformable to reason is the great practical law of life. Accordingly, the fundamental ethical maxim of the Stoics is, "Live conformably with nature--that is, with reason, or the will of the universal governor and manager of all things."841Thus the chief good (εὐδαιµονία) is the conformity of man's actions to reason--that is, to the will of God, "for nothing is well done without a reference to God."842
Footnote 841:(return)Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.
Footnote 842:(return)Marcus Aurelius, bk. iii. § II.
It is obvious that this doctrine must lead to a social morality and a jurisprudence the very opposite of the Epicurean. If we must do that which is good--that is, that which is reasonable, regardless of all consequences, then it is not for the pleasurable or useful results which flow from it that justiceshould be practised, but because of its intrinsic excellence. Justice is constituted good, not by the law of man, but by the law of God. The highest pleasure is to do right; "this very thing is the virtue of the happy man, and the perfect happiness of life, when every thing is done according to a harmony of the genius of each individual to the will of the Universal Governor and Manager of all things."843Every thing which interferes with a purely rational existence is to be eschewed; the pleasures and pains of the body are to be despised. To triumph over emotion, over suffering, over passion; to give the fullest ascendency to reason; to attain courage, moral energy, magnanimity, constancy, was to realize true manhood, nay, "to be godlike; for they have something in them which is, as it were, a god"844
The sublime heroism of the Stoic school is well expressed in the manly precept, "Ἀνεχοῦ"--sustine--endure. "Endure the sorrows engendered by the bitter struggle between the passions support all the evils which fortune shall send thee--calumny, betrayal, poverty, exile, irons, death itself." In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius this spirit seems to rise almost to the grandeur of Christian resignation. "Dare to lift up thine eyes to God and say, 'Use me hereafter to whatsoever thou pleasest. I agree, and am of the same mind with thee, indifferent to all things. Lead me whither thou pleasest. Let me act what part thou wilt, either of a public or a private person, of a rich man or a beggar.'"845"Show those qualities," says Marcus Aurelius, "which God hath put in thy power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity."846
Footnote 843:(return)Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. vii. ch. liii.
Footnote 844:(return)Id., ib., bk. vii. ch. xliv.
Footnote 845:(return)Arrian, "Diss. Epict.," bk. ii. ch. xviii.
Footnote 846:(return)"I read to-day part of the 'Meditations of Marcus Antonius' [Aurelius]. What a strange emperor! And what a strange heathen! Giving thanks to God for all the good things he enjoyed! In particular for his good inspirations, and for twice revealing to him, in dreams, things wherby he was cured of (otherwise) incurable distempers. I make no doubt but this is one of the 'many' who shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,' while the 'children of the kingdom'-- nominal Christians--are 'shut out.'"--Wesley's "Journal," vol. i, p. 353.
Amid the fearful moral degeneracy of imperial Rome, Stoicism became the refuge of all noble spirits. But, in spite of its severity, and its apparent triumph over the feelings, it brought no real freedom and peace. "Stoical morality, strictly speaking, is, at bottom, only a slavish morality, excellent in Epictetus; admirable still, but useless to the world, in Marcus Aurelius." Pride takes the place of real disinterestedness. It stands alone in haughty grandeur and solitary isolation, tainted with an incurable egoism. Disheartened by its metaphysical impotence, which robs God of all personality, and man of all hope of immortality; defeated in its struggle to obtain purity of soul, it sinks into despair, and often terminates, as in the case of its two first leaders, Zeno and Cleanthes, and the two Romans, Cato and Seneca, in self-murder. "Thus philosophy is only an apprenticeship of death, and not of life; it tends to death by its image,apathyandataraxy."847
Footnote 847:(return)Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 439.
"Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it now proved useful for godliness, being in some part a preliminary discipline (προπαιδεία τις οὖσα) for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration. Perhaps we may say it was given to the Greeks with this special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Jews, 'a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.'" --CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.
Philosophy, says Cousin, is the effort ofreflection--the attempt of the human mind to develop in systematic and logical form that which has dimly revealed itself in the spontaneous thought of ages, and to account to itself in some manner for its native and instinctive beliefs. We may further add, it is the effort of the human mind to attain to truth and certitude on purely rational grounds, uncontrolled by traditional authorities. The sublime era of Greek philosophy was, in fact, an independent effort of human reason to solve the great problems of existence, of knowledge, and of duty. It was an attempt to explain the phenomenal history of the universe, to interpret the fundamental ideas and laws of human reason, to comprehend the utterances of conscience, and to ascertain what Ultimate and Supreme Reality underlies the world of phenomena, of thought, and of moral feeling.848And it is this which, for us, constitutes its especial value; that it was, as far as possible, a result of simple reason; or, if at any time Faith asserted its authority, the distinction is clearly marked: If this inquiry was fully, and honestly, and logically conducted,we are entitled to presume that the results attain by this effort of speculative thought must harmonize with the positive utterances of the Divine Logos--the Eternal Reason, whose revelations are embalmed and transmitted to us in the Word of God. If the great truth that man is "theoffspring of God"and as such "the image and glory of God" which is asserted, alike, by Paul and the poet-philosophers of Tarsus and Mysia, be admitted, then we may expect that the reason of man shall have some correlation with the Divine reason. The mind of man is thechef-d'œuvreof Divine art. It is fashioned after the model which the Divine nature supplies. "Let us make man inourimage afterourlikeness." That image consists in ἐπίγνωσις--knowledge;δικαιοσύνη--justice; and ὁσιότης--benevolence.It is not merely thecapacityto know, to be just, and to be beneficent; it isactualknowledge, justice, and benevolence. It supposes, first, that the fundamental ideas of the true, the just, and the good, are connate to the human mind; second, that the native determination of the mind is towards the realization of these ideas in every mental state and every form of human activity; third, that there is a constitutional sympathy of reason with the ideas of truth, and righteousness, and goodness, as they dwell in the reason of God. And though man be now fallen, there is still within his heart some vestige of his primal nature. There is still a sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, "a feeling after God," and some longing to return to Him. There are still ideas in the reason, which, in their natural and logical development compel him to recognize a God. There is within his conscience a sense of duty, of obligation, and accountability to a Superior Power--"a law of the mind," thought opposed and antagonized by depraved passions and appetites--"the law in the members." There is yet a natural, constitutional sympathy of reason with the law of God--"it delights in that law," and consents "that it is good," but it is overborne and obstructed by passion. Man, even as unregenerate, "wills to do that which is good," but "how to perform that which is good he finds not," and in the agony of his soulhe exclaims, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!"849
Footnote 848:(return)Plato sought also to attain to the Ultimate Reality underlying all æsthetic feeling--the Supreme Beauty as well as the Supreme Good.
Footnote 849:(return)Romans, ch. vii.
The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first constituted man "a living soul" --that "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge," proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be wondered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we should find a strikingharmonyof sentiment, and even form of expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of our judgment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in Christian and in heathen lands is thesame"true light," though differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and reasonable to expect some connection and some correspondence between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of the Sacred Oracles.
Although Christianity is confessedly something which is above reason and nature--something communicated from above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural andsuperhuman, yet it must stand inrelationto reason and nature, and to their historic development; otherwise it could not operate on man at all. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can only be moved by forces, and according to laws, as it has properties which correlate it with these forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless it have powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. If man is to be instructed by a verbal revelation, he must, at least, be capacitated for the reception of divine communication--must have a power of forming supersensuous conceptions, and there must be some original community of thought and idea between the mind that teaches and the mind that is taught. A revelation from an invisible God--a being "whom no man has ever seen or ever can see" with the eye of sense--would have no affinity for, and no power to affect and enlighten, a being who had no presentiment of an invisible Power to which he is in some way related. A revealed law promulgated from an unseen and utterly unknown Power would have no constraining authority, if man had no idea of right, no sense of duty, no feeling of obligation to a Supreme Being. If, therefore, religious instruction be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, and of obligation to God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for revelation to act upon. Some relation between the reason which planned the universe, and which has expressed its thoughts in the numerical relations and archetypal forms which are displayed therein, and the reason of man, with its ideas of form and number, proportion and harmony, is necessarily supposed in the statement of Paul that "the invisible things of God from the creation are seen." Nature to us could be no symbol of the Divine Thought, if there were no correlation between the reason of man and the reason of God. All revelation, indeed, supposes some community of nature, some affinities of thought, some correlation of ideas, between the mind communicating spiritualknowledge, and the mind to which the communication is made. In approaching man, it must traverse ground already occupied by man; it must employ phrases already employed, and assume forms of thought already familiar to man. It must address itself to some ideas, sentiments, and feelings already possessed by man. If religion is the great end and destination of man, then the nature of man must be constituted for religion. Now religion, in its inmost nature, is a communion, a fellowship with God. But no creature can be brought into this communion "save one that is constitutionally related to God in terms that admit of correspondence." There must be intelligence offered to his intelligence, sentiment to his sentiment, reason to his reason, thought to his thought. There must be implanted in the human mind some fundamental ideas and determinations grounded upon this fact, that the real end and destination of man is for religion, so that when that higher sphere of life and action is presented to man, by an outward verbal revelation, there shall be a recognized harmony between the inner idea and determination, and the outer revelation. We can not doubt that such a relation between human nature and reason, and Christianity, exists. We see evidences of this in the perpetual strivings of humanity to attain to some fuller and clearer apprehension of that Supreme Power which is consciously near to human thought, and in the historic development of humanity towards those higher forms of thought and existence which demand a revelation in order to their completion. This original capacity, and this historical development, have unquestionably prepared the way for the reception of Christianity.
Christianity, then, must have some connection with the reason of man, and it must also have some relation to the progressive developments of human thought in the ages which preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sympathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded alonglines of thought which had been laid through ages of preparation; it clothed itself in forms of speech which had been moulded by centuries of education, and it appropriated to itself a moral and intellectual culture which had been effected by long periods of severest discipline. It was, in fact, the consummation of the whole moral and religious history of the world.
A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine light, in passing through such a medium, would have been darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished. The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to the light. Hence it is that all revelation has beenprogressive, commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and symbols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by some external, sensible appearance; they were often made through some preternatural personage in human form. Subsequently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine idea, God uses man as his organ, and communicates divine knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of our Lord's--"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit." For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's presence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration that "neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem,shall men worship the Father," to the exclusion of any other spot on earth; the real temple of the living God is now the heart of man. TheHolinessof God was an idea too lofty for human thought to grasp at once. The light of God's ineffable purity was too bright and dazzling to burst at once on human eyes. Therefore it was gradually displayed. The election of a chosen seed in Abraham's race to a nearer approach to God than the rest of pagan humanity; the announcement of the Decalogue at Sinai amidst awe-inspiring wonders; the separation of a single tribe to the priestly office, who were dedicated to, and purified in an especial manner for the service of the tabernacle; the sanctification of the High-priest by sacrifice and lustration before he dared to enter "the holiest place"--the presence-chamber of Jehovah: and then the direct and explicit teaching of the prophets--were all advancing steps by which the Jewish mind was lifted up to the clearer apprehension of the holiness of God, the impurity of man, the distance of man from God, and the need of Mediation.
The ideas ofRedemptionandSalvation--of atonement, expiation, pardon, adoption, and regeneration--are unique andsui-generis. Before these conceptions could be presented in the fullness and maturity of the Christian system, there was needed the culture and education of the ages of Mosaic ritualism, with its sacrificial system, its rights of purification, its priestly absolution, and its family of God.850Redemption itself, as an economy, is a development, and has consequently, a history--a history which had its commencement in the first Eden, and which shall have its consummation in the second Eden of a regenerated world. It was germinally infolded in the first promise, gradually unfolded in successive types and prophecies, more fully developed in the life, and sayings, and sufferings of the Son of God, and its ripened fruit is presented to the eye of faith in the closing scenic representations of the grand Apocalypse of John. "Judaism was not given as a perfect religion. Whatever may have been its superiority over surrounding formsof worship, it was, notwithstanding, a provisional form only. The consciousness that it was a preparatory, and not a definite dispensation, is evident throughout. It points to an end beyond itself, suggests a grander thought than any in itself; its glory precisely consists in its constant looking forward to a glorious future destined to surpass it."851
Footnote 850:(return)Romans, IX 4-6.
Footnote 851:(return)Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," p. 202.
Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to the lot of history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emancipating law ofgradual progress.852Christianity was preceded by ages of preparation, in which we have a gradual development of religious phrases and ideas, of forms of social life and intellectual culture, and of national and political institutions most favorable to its advent and its promulgation; and "in the fullness of time"--the maturity and fitness of the age--"God sent his own Son into the world."
Footnote 852:(return)"System of Doctrine," p. 73.
This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism. The divine plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its provisions are made in view of the wants of all the race; and we must therefore believe that the entire history of the race, previous to the coming of the Redeemer, was under a divine supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of our world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization must therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and they must stand in an important relation to Christianity. He who "determined the time of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation in order that they may seek the Lord," can not have been unmindful of the Greek nation, and of its grandest age of philosophy. "The Father of the spirits of all flesh" could not be unconcerned in the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children. He was as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is the God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies are over all his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be the agent of his providence in one special field, and if the Jewishtheocracy was one grand instrument of preparatory discipline, it was simply because, through these, God designed to bless all the nations of the earth. And surely no one will presume to say that a civilization and an intellectual culture which was second only to the Hebrew, and, in some of its aspects, even in advance of the Hebrew, was not determined and supervised by Divine Providence, and made subservient to the education and development of the whole race. The grand results of Hebrew civilization were appropriated and assimilated by Christianity, and remain to this day. And no one can deny that the same is true of Greek civilization. Through a kind of historic preparation the heathen world was made ready for Christ, as a soil is prepared to receive the seed, and some precious fruits of knowledge, of truth, and of righteousness, even, were largely matured, which have been reaped, and appropriated, and vitalized by the heaven-descended life of Christianity.
The chief points of excellence in the civilization of the Greeks are strikingly obvious, and may be readily presented. High perfection of the intellect and the imagination displaying itself in the various forms of art, poetry, literature, and philosophy. A wonderful freedom and activity of body and of mind, developed in trade, and colonization, in military achievement, and in subtile dialectics. A striking love of the beautiful, revealing itself in their sculpture and architecture, in the free music of prosaic numbers, and the graceful movement and measure of their poetry. A quickness of perception, a dignity of demeanor, a refinement of taste, a delicacy of moral sense, and a high degree of reverence for the divine in nature and humanity. And, in general, a ripe and all-pervading culture, which has made Athens a synonym for all that is greatest and best in the genius of man; so that literature, in its most flourishing periods has rekindled its torch at her altars, and art has looked back to the age of Pericles for her purest models.853Allthese enter into the very idea of Greek civilization. We can not resist the conviction that, by a Divine Providence, it was made subservient to the purpose of Redemption; it prepared the way for, and contributed to, the spread of the Gospel.
Footnote 853:(return)In Lord Brougham's celebrated letter to the father of the historian Macaulay in regard to the education of the latter, we read: "If he would be a great orator, he must go at once to the fountain-head, and be familiar with every one of the great orations of Demosthenes.... I know from experience that nothing is half so successful in these times (bad though they be) as what has been formed on the Greek models. I use poor illustrations in giving my own experience, but I do assure you that both in courts and Parliament, and even to mobs, I have never made so much play (to use a very modern phrase) as when I was almost translating from the Greek. I composed the peroration of my speech for the Queen, in the Lords, after reading and repeating Demosthenes for three or four weeks."
Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek tendency to trade and colonization. Their mental activity was accompanied by great physical freedom of movement. They displayed an inherent disposition to extensive emigration. "Without aiming at universal conquest, they developed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the other hand, though they despised the foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies; and lower Italy, when the Roman Republic was just becoming conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements.... They were gradually taking the place of the Phœnicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers.Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on general civilization was greater and more permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo, are our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul's journeys.
"With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took the meshes of the net of Greek civilization which were lying in disorder on the edge of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separate tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia, and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt, and called by his name.
"The empire of Alexander was divided, but the effects of his campaigns and policy did not cease. The influence of these fresh elements of social life was rather increased by being brought into independent action within the sphere of distinct kingdoms. Our attention is particularly directed to two of the monarchical lines which descended from Alexander's generals--the Ptolemies, or the Greek kings of Egypt, and the Seleucidæ, or the Greek kings of Syria. Their respective capitals, Alexandria and Antioch, became the metropolitan centres of commercial and civilized life in the East."854Antioch was for ages the home of science and philosophy. Here the religious opinions of the East and the West were blended and mutually modified. Here it was discovered by the heathen mind that a new religion had appeared, and a new revelation had beengiven.855In Alexandria all nations were invited to exchange their commodities and, with equal freedom, their opinions. The representatives of all religions met here. "Beside the Temple of Jupiter there rose the white marble Temple of Serapis, and close at hand stood the synagogue of the Jews." The Alexandrian library contained all the treasures of ancient culture, and even a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Footnote 854:(return)Conybeare and Howson, "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. pp. 8-10.
Footnote 855:(return)Acts, xi. 26.
The spread of the Greeklanguagewas one of the most important services which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria rendered to Christianity. The Greek tongue is intimately connected with the whole system of Christian doctrine.
This language, which, in symmetry of structure, in flexibility and compass of expression, in exactness and precision, in grace and elegance, exceeds every other language, became the language of theology. Next in importance to the inspiration which communicates the superhuman thought, must be the gradual development of the language in which the thought can clothe itself. That development by which the Greek language became the adequate vehicle of Divine thought, the perfect medium of the mature revelation of truth contained in the Christian Scriptures, must be regarded as the subject of a Divine providence. Christianity waited for that development, and it awaited Christianity. "The Greek tongue became to the Christian more than it had been to the Roman or the Jew. The mother-tongue of Ignatius at Antioch was that in which Philo composed his treatises at Alexandria, and which Cicero spoke at Athens. It is difficult to state in a few words the important relation which Alexandria, more especially, was destined to bear to the whole Christian Church." In that city, the Old Testament was translated into Greek; there the writings of Plato were diligently studied; there Philo, the Platonizing Jew, had sought to blend into one system the teachings of the Old Testament theology and the dialectic speculations of Plato. Numenius learns of Philo, and Plotinus of Numenius, and the ecstasy of Plotinus is the development of Philo'sintuitions. Atheological languageby this means was developed, rich in the phrases of various schools, and suited to convey the spiritual revelation of Christian ideas to all the world. "It was not an accident that the New Testament was written in Greek, the language which can best express the highest thoughts and worthiest feelings of the intellect and heart, and which is adapted to be the instrument of education for all nations; nor was it an accident that the composition of these books and the promulgation of the Gospels were delayed till the instruction of our Lord, and the writings of his Apostles could be expressed in the dialect [of Athens and] of Alexandria."856] This must be ascribed to the foreordination of Him who, in the history of nations and of civilizations, "worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will."
Footnote 856:(return)Conybeare and Howson, "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. p. 10.
Now it is the doctrine of the best philologists that language is agrowth. Gradually, and by combined efforts of successive generations, it has been brought to the perfection which we so much admire in the idioms of the Bible, the poetry of Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare, and the prose compositions of Demosthenes, Cicero, Johnson, and Macaulay. The material or root-element of language may have been the product of mental instinct, or perhaps the immediate gift of God by revelation; but the formal element must have been the creation of thought, and the result of rational combination. Language is really the incarnation of thought; consequently the growth of a language, its affluence, comprehension, and fullness must depend on the vigor and activity of thought, and the acquisition of general ideas. Language is thus the best index of intellectual progress, the best standard of the intellectual attainment of an age or nation. The language of barbaric tribes is exceedingly simple and meagre; the paucity of general terms clearly indicating the absence of all attempts at classification and all speculative thought. Whilst the language of educated peoples is characterized by great fullness and affluence of terms, especially such as are expressive of general notions andabstract ideas. All grammar, all philology, all scientific nomenclature are thus, in fact,psychological deposits, which register the progressive advancement of human thought and knowledge in the world of mind, as the geological strata bear testimony to the progressive development of the material world. "Language," says Trench, "is fossil poetry, fossil history," and, we will add, fossil philosophy. Many a single word is a concentrated poem. The record of great social and national revolutions is embalmed in a single term.857And the history of an age of philosophic thought is sometimes condensed and deposited in one imperishable word.858
Footnote 857:(return)See Trench "On the Study of Words," p. 20, where the word "frank" is given as an illustration.
Footnote 858:(return)For example, the κόσµος of the Pythagoreans, the εὶδη of the Platonists, and the ἀταραξία of the Stoics.
If, then, language is the creation of thought, the sensible vesture with which it clothes itself, and becomes, as it were, incarnate--if the perfection and efficiency of language depends on the maturity and clearness of thought, we conclude that the wonderful adequacy and fitness of the Greek language to be the vehicle of the Divine thought, the medium of the most perfect revelation of God to men, can only be explained on the assumption that the ages of philosophic thought which, in Greece, preceded the advent of Christianity, were under the immediate supervision of a providence, and, in some degree, illuminated by the Spirit of God.
Greek philosophy must therefore have fulfilled a propædeutic office for Christianity. "As it had been intrusted to the Hebrews to preserve and transmit the heaven-derived element of the Monotheistic religion, so it was ordained that, among the Greeks, all seeds of human culture should unfold themselves in beautiful harmony, and then Christianity, taking up the opposition between the divine and human, was to unite both in one, and show how it was necessary that both should co-operate to prepare for the appearance of itself and the unfolding of what it contains."859During the period of Greek philosophywhich preceded the coming of Christ, human reason, unfolding itself from beneath, had aspired after that knowledge of divine things which is from above. It had felt within itself the deep-seated consciousness of God--the sporadic revelation of Him "who is not far from any one of us"--the immanent thought of that Being "in whom we live and move and are," and it had striven by analysis and definition to attain a more distinct and logical apprehension. The heart of man had been stirred with "the feeling after God"--the longing for a clearer sense of the divine, and had struggled to attain, by abstraction or by ecstasy, a more immediate communion with God. Man had been conscious of an imperative obligation to conform to the will of the great Supreme, and he sought to interpret more clearly the utterances of conscience as to what duty was. He had felt the sense of sin and guilt, and had endeavored to appease his conscience by expiatory offerings, and to deliver himself from the power of sin by intellectual culture and moral discipline. And surely no one, at all familiar with the history of that interesting epoch in the development of humanity, will have the hardihood to assert that no steps were taken in the right direction, and no progress made towards the distant goal of human desire and hope. The language, the philosophy, the ideals of moral beauty and excellence, the noble lives and nobler utterances of the men who stand forth in history as the representatives of Greek civilization, all attest that their noble aspiration and effort did not end in ignominious failure and utter defeat. It is true they fell greatly beneath the realization of even their own moral ideals, and they became painfully conscious of their moral weakness, as men do even in Christian times. They learned that, neither by intellectual abstraction, nor by ecstasy of feeling, could they lift themselves to a living, conscious fellowship with God. The sense of guilt was unrelieved by expiations, penances, and prayers. And whilst some cultivated a proud indifference, a Stoical apathy, and others sank down to Epicurean ease and pleasure, there was a noble few who longed and hoped with increasing ardor for a livingRedeemer, a personal Mediator, who should "stand between God and man and lay his hand on both." Christ became in some dim consciousness "the Desire of Nations," and the Moral Law became even to the Greek as well as the Jew "a school-master to lead them to Him."
Footnote 859:(return)Neander's "Church History," vol. i. p. 4.
The arrival of Paul at Athens, in the close of this brilliant period of Greek philosophy, now assumes an aspect of deeper interest and profounder significance. It was a grand climacteric in the life of humanity--an epoch in the moral and religious history of the world. It marked the consummation of a periodic dispensation, and it opened a new era in that wonderful progression through which an overruling Providence is carrying the human race. As the coming of the Son of God to Judea in the ripeness of events--"the fullness of time"--was the consummation of the Jewish dispensation, and the event for which the Jewish age had been a preparatory discipline, so the coming of a Christian teacher to Athens, in the person of "the Apostle of the Gentiles," was theterminus ad quemtowards which all the phases in the past history of philosophic thought had looked, and for which they had prepared. Christianity was brought to Athens--brought into contact with Grecian philosophy at the moment of its exhaustion--at the moment when, after ages of unwearied effort, it had become conscious of its weakness, and its comparative failure, and had abandoned many questions in despair. Greek philosophy had therefore its place in the plan of Divine Providence. It had a mission to the world; that mission was now fulfilled. If it had laid any foundation in the Athenian mind on which the Christian system could plant its higher truths--if it had raised up into the clearer light of consciousness any of thoseideasimbedded in the human reason which are germane to Christian truth--if it had revealed more fully the wants and instincts of the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed itsimprimatur. And at those points where human reason had been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled toown its weakness and its failure, Christianity shed an effulgent and convincing light.
Therefore the preparatory office of Greek religion and Greek philosophy is fully recognized by Paul in his address to the Athenians. He begins by saying that the observations he had made enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were indeed, in every respect, "a God-fearing people;"--that the God whom they knew so imperfectly as to designate Him "the Unknown," but whom "they worshipped," was the God he worshipped, and would now more fully declare to them. He assures them that their past history, and their present geographical position, had been the object of Divine foreknowledge and determination. "He hath determined beforehand the times of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation," all with this specific design, that they might "seek after," "feel after," and "find the Lord," who had never been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations of the divine, and he looked for their firmer delineation to the figure of that gracious Master, higher and holier than man, whom he contemplated in his own imagination, and whom he was about to present to them."860
Footnote 860:(return)Merivale's "Conversion of the Roman Empire," p. 78.
This function of ancient philosophy is distinctly recognized by many of the greatest of the Fathers, as Justin, Clement, Origen, Augustine, and Theodoret. Justin Martyr believed that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the heathen, and that the human soul instinctively turned towards God as the plant turns towards the sun. "Every race of menparticipated in the Word. And they who lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were held to be godless; as, for example, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and those like them."861Clement taught that "philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; and now it proved useful for godliness, being a sort of preliminary discipline for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration.... Perhaps we may say that it was given to the Greeks with this special object, for it brought the Greek nation to Christ as the Law brought the Hebrews."862"Philosophy was given as a peculiar testament to the Greeks, as forming the basis of the Christian philosophy."863Referring to the words of Paul, Origen says, the truths which philosophers taught were from God, for "God manifested these to them, and all things that have been nobly said."864And Augustine, whilst deprecating the extravagant claims made for the great Gentile teachers, allows "that some of them made great discoveries, so far as they received help from heaven; whilst they erred as far as they were hindered by human frailty."865They had, as he elsewhere observes, "a distant vision of the truth, and learnt, from the teaching of nature, what prophets learnt from the spirit."866In addressing the Greeks, Theodoret says, "Obey your own philosophers; let them be your initiators; for they announced beforehand our doctrines." He held that "in the depths of human nature there are characters inscribed by the hand of God." And that "if the race of Abraham received the divine law, and the gift of prophecy, the God of the universe led other nations to piety by natural revelation, and the spectacle of nature."867
Footnote 861:(return)"First Apology," ch. xlvi.
Footnote 862:(return)"Stromata," bk. i. ch. v.
Footnote 863:(return)"Stromata," bk. vi. ch. viii.
Footnote 864:(return)"Contra Celsum," bk. vi. ch. iii.
Footnote 865:(return)"De Civitate Dei," bk. ii. ch. vii.
Footnote 866:(return)Sermon lxviii. 3.
Footnote 867:(return)See Smith's "Bible Dictionary," article "Philosophy;" Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," p. II; Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 28-40.
In attempting to account for this partial harmony between Philosophy and Revelation, we find the Patristic writers adopting different theories. They are generally agreed in maintainingsome original connection, but they differ as to its immediate source. Some of them maintained that the ancient philosophers derived their purest light from the fountain of Divine Revelation. The doctrines of the Old Testament Scriptures were traditionally diffused throughout the West before the rise of philosophic speculation. If the theistic conceptions of Plato are superior to those of Homer it is accounted for by his (hypothetical) tour of inquiry among the Hebrew nation, as well as his Egyptian investigations. Others maintained that the similarity of views on the character of the Supreme Being and the ultimate destination of humanity which is found in the writings of Plato and the teachings of the Bible is the consequence ofimmediateinspiration. Origen, Jerome, Eusebius, Clement, do not hesitate to affirm that Christ himself revealed his own high prerogatives to the gifted Grecian. From this hypothesis, however, the facts of the case compel them to make some abatements. In the mid-current of this divine revelation are found many acknowledged errors, which it is impossible to ascribe to the celestial illuminator. Plato, then, waspartiallyinspired, and clouded the heavenly beam with the remaining grossnesses of the natural sense.868Whilst a third, and more reasonable, hypothesis was maintained by others. They regarded man as "the offspring and image of the Deity," and maintained there must be a correlation of the human and divine reason, and, consequently, of all discovered truth to God. Therefore they expected to find some traces of connection and correspondence between Divine and human thought, and some kindred ideas in Philosophy and Revelation. "Ideas," says St. Augustine, "are the primordial forms, as it were, the immutable reason of things; they are not created, they are eternal, and always the same: they are contained in the Divine intelligence and without being subject to birth and death, they aretypesaccording to which is formed every thing that is born and dies." The copies of these archetypes are seen in nature, and are participated in by the reason of man; and there may thereforebe some community of idea between man and God, and some relation between Philosophy and Christianity.
Footnote 868:(return)Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 41.
The various attempts which have been made to trace the elevated theism and morality of Socrates and Plato to Jewish sources have signally failed. Justin Martyr and Tertullian claim that the ancient philosophers "borrowed from the Jewish prophets." Pythagoras and Plato are supposed to have travelled in the East in quest of knowledge.869The latter is imagined to have had access to an existing Greek version of the Old Testament in Egypt, and a strange oversight in chronology brings him into personal intercourse with the prophet Jeremiah. A sober and enlightened criticism is compelled to pronounce all these statements as mere exaggerations of later times.870They are obviously mere suppositions by which over-zealous Christians sought to maintain the supremacy and authority of Scripture. The travels of Pythagoras are altogether mythical, the mere invention of Alexandrian writers, who believed that all wisdom flowed from the East.871That Plato visited Egypt at all, rests on the single authority of Strabo, who lived at least four centuries after Plato; there is no trace in his own works of Egyptian research. His pretended travels in Phœnicia, where he gained from the Jews a knowledge of the true God, are more unreliable still. Plato lived in the fourth century before Christ (born B.C. 430), and there is no good evidence of the existence of a Greek version of the Old Testament before that of "the Seventy" (Septuagint), made by order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 270. Jeremiah, the prophet of Israel, lived two centuries before Plato; consequently any personal intercourse between the two was simply impossible. Greek philosophy was unquestionably a development of Reason alone.872
Footnote 869:(return)Mr. Watson adopts this hypothesis to account for the theistic opinions of the ancient philosophers of Greece. See "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. pp. 26-34.
Footnote 870:(return)Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 147.
Footnote 871:(return)Max Muller, "Science of Language," p. 94.
Footnote 872:(return)See on this subject, Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. pp. 147, 148; Encyclopædia Britannica, article "Plato," vol. xvii. p. 787; Smith's "Bible Dictionary," article "Philosophy;" and Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 326.