"If we regard this sublime philosophy as a preparation for Christianity instead of seeking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not need to overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value."--Pressensé.
"Plato made me to know the true God. Jesus Christ showed me the way to Him."--St. Augustine.
The preparatory office of Grecian philosophy is also seen inthe department of morals.
I.In the awakening and enthronement of Conscience as a law of duty, and the elevation and purification of the Moral Idea.
The same law of evolution, which we have seen governing the history of speculative thought, may also be traced as determining the progress of ethical inquiry. In this department there are successive stages marked, both in the individual and the national mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood, submitting with unquestioning faith to prescribed and arbitrary laws; then the unsettled and ill-directed force of youth, questioning the authority of laws, and asking reasons why this or that is obligatory; then the philosophic wisdom of riper years, recognizing an inherent law of duty, which has an absolute rightness and an imperative obligation. There is first a dim and shadowy apprehension of some lines of moral distinction, and some consciousness of obligation, but these rest mainly upon an outward law--the observed practice of others, or the command of the parent as, in some sense, the command of God. Then, to attain to personal convictions, man passes through a stage of doubt; he asks for a ground of obligation, for an authority that shall approve itself to his own judgment and reason. At last he arrives at some ultimate principles of right, some immutable standard of duty; herecognizes an inward law of conscience, and it becomes to him as the voice of God. He extends his analysis to history, and he finds that the universal conscience of the race has, in all ages, uttered the same behest. Should he live in Christian times, he discovers a wondrous harmony between the voice of God within the heart, and the voice of God within the pages of inspiration. And now the convention of public opinion, and the laws of the state, are revered and upheld by him, just so far as they bear the imprimatur of reason and of conscience--that is, of God.
This history of the normal development of the individual mind has its counterpart in the history of humanity. There is (1.)The age of popular and unconscious morality; (2.)The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical age; and (3.)The philosophic or conscious age of morality.899In the "Republic" of Plato, we have these three eras represented by different persons, through the course of the dialogue. The question is started--what is Justice? and an answer is given from the stand-point of popular morality, by Polemarchus, who quotes the words of the poet Simonides,
"To give to each his due is just;"900
that is, justice is paying your debts. This doctrine being proved inadequate, an answer is given from the Sophistical point of view by Thrasymachus, who defines justice as "the advantage of the strongest"--that is, might is right, and right is might.901This answer being sharply refuted, the way is opened for a more philosophic account, which is gradually evolved in book iv., Glaucon and Adimantus personifying the practical understanding, which is gradually brought into harmony with philosophy, and Socrates the higher reason, as the purely philosophic conception. Justice is found to be the right proportion and harmonious development of all the elements of the soul, and the equal balance of all the interests of society, so as to secure a well-regulated and harmonious whole.
Footnote 899:(return)Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 46.
Footnote 900:(return)"Republic," bk. i. § 6.
Footnote 901:(return)Ibid., bk. i. § 12.
The era ofpopular and unconscious moralityis represented by the times of Homer, Hesiod, the Gnomic poets, and "the Seven Wise Men of Greece."
This was an age of instinctive action, rather than reflection--of poetry and feeling, rather than analytic thought. The rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions. Morality was immediately associated with the religion of the state, and the will of the gods was the highest law for men. "Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, constituted the educational course," to which may be added the saws and aphorisms of the Seven Wise Men, and we have before us the main sources of Greek views of duty. When the question was asked--"What is right?" the answer was given by a quotation from Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and the like. The morality of Homer "is concrete, not abstract; it expresses the conception of a heroic life, rather than a philosophic theory. It is mixed up with a religion which really consists in a celebration of the beauty of nature, and in a deification of the strong and brilliant qualities of human nature. It is a morality uninfluenced by a regard for a future life. It clings with intense enjoyment and love to the present world, and the state after death looms up in the distance as a cold and repugnant shadow. And yet it would often hold death preferable to disgrace. The distinction between a noble and ignoble life is strongly marked in Homer, and yet a sense of right and wrong about particular actions seems fluctuating" and confused.902A sensuous conception of happiness is the chief good, and mere temporal advantage the principal reward of virtue. We hear nothing of the approving smile of conscience, of inward self-satisfaction, and peace, and harmony, resulting from the practice of virtue. Justice, energy, temperance, chastity, are enjoined, because they secure temporal good. And yet, with all this imperfection, the poets present "a remarkable picture of primitive simplicity, chastity, justice, and practical piety, underthe three-fold influence of right moral feeling, mutual and fear of the divine displeasure."903
Footnote 902:(return)Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 51.
Footnote 903:(return)Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 167.
Thetransitional, skeptical, orsophistical erabegins with Protagoras. Poetry and proverbs had ceased to satisfy the reason of man. The awakening intellect had begun to call in question the old maxims and "wise saws," to dispute the arbitrary authority of the poets, and even to arraign the institutions of society. It had already begun to seek for some reasonable foundation of authority for the opinions, customs, laws, and institutions which had descended to them from the past, and to ask why men were obliged to do this or that? The question whether there is at bottom any real difference between truth and error, right and wrong, was now fairly before the human mind. The ultimate standard of all truth and all right, was now the grand object of pursuit. These inquiries were not, however, conducted by the Sophists with the best motives. They were not always prompted by an earnest desire to know the truth, and an earnest purpose to embrace and do the right. They talked and argued for mere effect--to display their dialectic subtilty, or their rhetorical power. They taught virtue for mere emolument and pay. They delighted, as Cicero tells us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal effect. And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties, maintaining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for solid proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophistical spirit which is given by all the best writers who lived nearest to their times, and who are, therefore, to be presumed to have known them best. Grote904has made an elaborate defense of the Sophists; he charges Plato with gross misrepresentation. His portraits of them are denounced as mere caricatures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism; all antiquity is presumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can read Grant's "Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in Greece"905without feeling that his vindication of Plato iscomplete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in general,906but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions than directly attacks them." The Sophists were wanting in deep conviction, in moral earnestness, in sincere love of truth, in reverence for goodness and purity, and therefore their trifling, insincere, and paradoxical teaching was unfavorable to goodness of life. The tendency of their method is forcibly depicted in the words of Plato: "There are certain dogmas relating to what isjustandgoodin which we have been brought up from childhood--obeying and reverencing them. Other opinions recommending pleasure and license we resist, out of respect for the old hereditary maxims. Well, then, a question comes up concerning what is right? He gives some answer such as he has been taught, and straightway is refuted. He tries again, and is again refuted. And, when this has happened pretty often, he is reduced to the opinion thatnothing is either right or wrong; and in the same way it happens about the just and the good, and all that before we have held in reverence. On this, he naturally abandons his allegiance to the old principles and takes up with those he before resisted, and so, from being a good citizen, he becomes lawless."907And, in point of fact, this was the theoretical landing-place of the Sophists. We do not say they became practically "lawless" and antinomian, but they did arrive at the settled opinion that right and wrong, truth and error, are solely matter of private opinion and conventional usage. Man's own fluctuating opinion is the measure and standard of all things.908They who "make the laws, make them for their own advantage."909Thereis no such thing as Eternal Right. "That whichappearsjust and honorable to each city is so for that city, as long as the opinion prevails."910
Footnote 904:(return)"History of Greece."
Footnote 905:(return)Aristotle's "Ethics," vol. i. ch. ii
Footnote 906:(return)"His teachings will be good counsels about a man's own affairs, how best to govern his family; and also about the affairs of the state, how most ably to administer and speak of state affairs."--"Protag.," § 26.
Footnote 907:(return)"Republic," bk. vii. ch. xvii.
Footnote 908:(return)"Theætetus," § 23.
Footnote 909:(return)"Gorgias," §§ 85-89.
Footnote 910:(return)"Theætetus," §§ 65-75.
The age of the Sophists was a transitional period--a necessary, though, in itself considered, an unhappy stage in the progress of the human mind; but it opened the way for,The Socratic, philosophic, orconscious age of morals. It has been said that "before Socrates there was no morality in Greece, but only propriety of conduct." If by this is meant that prior to Socrates men simply followed the maxims of "the Theologians,"911and obeyed the laws of the state, without reflection and inquiry as to the intrinsic character of the acts, and without any analysis and exact definition, so as to attain to principles of ultimate and absolute right, it must be accepted as true--there was no philosophy of morals. Socrates is therefore justly regarded as "the father of moral philosophy." Aristotle says that he confined himself chiefly to ethical inquiries. He sought a determinate conception and an exact definition of virtue. As Xenophon has said of him, "he never ceased asking, What is piety? what is impiety? what is noble? what is base? what is just? what is unjust? what is temperance? what is madness?"912And these questions were not asked in the Sophistic spirit, as a dialectic exercise, or from idle curiosity. He was a perfect contrast to the Sophists. They had slighted Truth, he made her the mistress of his soul. They had turned away from her, he longed for more perfect communion with her. They had deserted her for money and renown, he was faithful to her in poverty.913He wanted to know what piety was, that he might be pious. He desired to know what justice, temperance, nobility, courage were, that he might cultivate and practise them. He wrote no books, delivered no lectures; he instituted no school; he simply conversed in the shop, the market-place, the banquet-hall, and the prison. This philosophywas not so much adoctrineas alife. "What is remarkable in him is not thesystembut theman. The memory he left behind him amongst his disciples, though idealized--the affection, blended with reverence, which they never ceased to feel for his person, bear testimony to the elevation of his character and his moral purity. We recognize in him a Greek of Athens--one who had imbibed many dangerous errors, and on whom the yoke of pagan custom still weighed; but his life was nevertheless a noble life; and it is to calumny we must have recourse if we are to tarnish its beauty by odious insinuations, as Lucian did, and as has been too frequently done, after him, by unskillful defenders of Christianity,914who imagine it is the gainer by all that degrades human nature. Born in a humble position, destitute of all the temporal advantages which the Greeks so passionately loved, Socrates exerted a kingship over minds. His dominion was the more real for being less apparent.... His power consisted of three things: his devoted affection for his disciples, his disinterested love of truth, and the perfect harmony of his life and doctrine.... If he recommended temperance and sobriety, he also set the example; poorly clad, satisfied with little, he disdained all the delicacies of life. He possessed every species of courage. On the field of battle he was intrepid, and still more intrepid when he resisted the caprices of the multitude who demanded of him, when he was a senator, to commit the injustice of summoning ten generals before the tribunals. He also infringed the iniquitous orders of the thirty tyrants of Athens. The satires of Aristophanes neither moved nor irritated him. The same dauntless firmness he displayed when brought before his judges, charged with impiety. 'If it is your wish to absolve me on condition that I henceforth be silent, I reply I love and honor you, but I ought rather to obey the gods than you. Neither in the presence of judges nor of the enemy is it permitted me, or any other man, to use every sort of means to escape death. It is not death but crime that it is difficult to avoid;crime moves faster than death. So I, old and heavy as I am, have allowed myself to be overtaken by death, while my accusers, light and vigorous, have allowed themselves to be overtaken by the light-footed crime. I go, then, to suffer death; they to suffer shame and iniquity. I abide by my punishment, as they by theirs. All is according to order.' It was the same fidelity to duty that made Socrates refuse to escape from prison, in order not to violate the laws of his country, to which, even though irritated, more respect is due than to a father. 'Let us walk in the path,' he says 'that God has traced for us.' These last words show the profound religious sentiment which animated Socrates.... It is impossible not to feel that there was something divine in such a life crowned with such a death."915
Footnote 911:(return)Homer, Hesiod, etc.
Footnote 912:(return)"Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. i. p. 16.
Footnote 913:(return)Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 122.
Footnote 914:(return)Watson's "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 374.
Footnote 915:(return)Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," pp. 109-111.
Socrates laid the foundation for conscious morality by placing the ground of right and wrong in an eternal and unchangeable reason which illuminates the reason and conscience of every man. He often asserted that morality is a science which can not be taught. It depends mainly upon principles which are discovered by an inward light. Accordingly he regarded it as the main business of education to "draw out" into the light of consciousness the principles of right and justice which are infolded within the conscience of man--to deliver the mind of the secret truth which was striving towards the light of day. Therefore he called his method the "maieutic" or "obstetric" art. He felt there was something divine in all men (answering to hisτὸ δαιµόνιονorδαιµόνιον τι--a divine and supernatural something--a warning "voice"--a gnomic "sign"--a "law of God written on the heart"), which by a system of skillful interrogations he sought to elicit, so that each might hear for himself the voice of God, and, hearing, might obey. Thus was he the "great prophet of the human conscience," and a messenger of God to the heathen world, to prepare the way of the Lord.
The morality of conscience was carried to its highest point by Plato. From the moment he became the disciple ofSocrates he sympathized deeply with the spirit and the method of his master. He had the same deep seriousness of spirit, that same earnestness of purpose, that same inward reverence for justice, and purity, and goodness, which dwelt in the heart of Socrates. A naturally noble nature, he loved truth with all the glow and fervor of his young heart. He felt that if any thing gave meaning and value to life, it must be the contemplation of absolute truth, absolute beauty, and absolute Good. This absolute Good is God, who is the first principle of all ideas, the fountain of all the order and proportion and beauty of the universe, the source of all the good which exists in nature and in man. To practise goodness--to conform the character to the eternal models of order, proportion, and excellence, is to resemble God. To aspire after perfection of moral being, to secure assimilation to God (όµοίωσις θεῷ) is the noble aspiration of Plato's soul.
When we read the "Gorgias," the "Philebus," and especially the "Republic," with what noble joy are we filled on hearing the voice of conscience, like a harp swept by a seraph's hand, uttering such deep-toned melodies! How does he drown the clamors of passion, the calculations of mere expediency, the sophism of mere personal interest and utility. If he calls us to witness the triumph of the wicked in the first part of the "Republic," it is in order that we may at the end of the book see the deceitfulness of their triumph. "As to the wicked," he says, "I maintain that even if they succeed at first in concealing what they are, most of them betray themselves at the end of their career. They are covered with opprobrium, and present evils are nothing compared with those thatawait them in the other life. As to the just man, whether in sickness or in poverty, these imaginary evils will turn to his advantage in this life,and after his death; because the providence of the gods is necessarily attentive to the interests of him who labors to become just, and to attain, by the practice of virtue, to the most perfect resemblance to God which is possible to man."916He risesabove all "greatest happiness principles," and asserts distinctly in the "Gorgias" that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.917"I maintain," says he, "that what is most shameful is not to be struck unjustly on the cheek, or to be wounded in the body; but that to strike and wound me unjustly, to rob me, or reduce me to slavery--to commit, in a word, any kind of injustice towards me, or what is mine--is a thing far worse and more odious for him who commits the injustice, than for me who suffer it."918It is a great combat, he says, greater than we think, that wherein the issue is whether we shall be virtuous or wicked. Neither glory, nor riches, nor dignities, nor poetry, deserves that we should neglect justice for them. The moral idea in Plato has such intense truth and force, that it has at times a striking analogy with the language of the Holy Scriptures.919
Footnote 916:(return)"Republic," bk. x. ch. xii.
Footnote 907:(return)"Gorgias," §§ 59-80.
Footnote 918:(return)Ibid., § 137.
Footnote 919:(return)Pressensé, "Religions before Christ," p. 129.
The obligation of moral rectitude is, by Plato, derived from the authoritative utterances of conscience as the voice of God. We must do right because reason and conscience say it is right. In the "Euthyphron" he maintains that the moral quality of actions is not dependent on the arbitrary will of a Supreme Governor;--"an act is not holy because the gods love it, but the gods love it because it is holy." The eternal law of right dwells in the Eternal Reason of God, the idea of right in all human minds is a ray of that Eternal Reason; and the requirement of the divine law that we shall do right is, and must be, in harmony with both.
The present life is regarded by Plato as a state of probation and discipline, the future life as one of reward and punishment.920
Footnote 920:(return)"Republic," bk. x. ch. xv., xvi.; "Laws," bk. x. ch. xiii.
Plato was thus to the heathen world "the great apostle of the moral idea;" he followed up and completed the work of Socrates. "The voice of God, that still found a profound echo in man's heart, possessed in him an organ to which all Greece gave ear; and the austere revelation of conscience this timeembodied in language too harmonious not to entice by the beauty of form, a nation of artists, they received it. The tables of the eternal law, carved in purest marble and marvellously sculptured, were read by them."
In Plato both the theistic conception and the moral idea seem to have touched the zenith. The philosophy of Aristotle, considered as a whole, appears on one side to have passed the line of the great Hellenic period. If it did not inaugurate, it at least prepared the way for the decline. It perfected logic, as the instrument of ratiocination, and gave it exactness and precision, Yet taken all in all, it was greatly inferior to its predecessor. From the moral point of view it is a decided retrogression. The god of Aristotle is indifferent to virtue. He is pure thought rather than moral perfection. He takes no cognizance of man. Morality has no eternal basis, no divine type, and no future reward. Therefore Aristotle's philosophy had little power over the conscience and heart.
During the grand Platonic period human reason made its loftiest flight, it rose aloft and soared towards heaven, but alas! its wings, like those of Icarus, melted in the sun and it fell to earth again. Instead of wax it needed the strong "eagle pinions of faith" which revelation only can supply. The decadence is strongly marked both in the Epicurean and Stoic schools. They both express the feeling of exhaustion, disappointment, and despair. The popular theology had lost its hold upon the public mind. The gods no longer visited the earth. "The mysterious voice which, according to the poetic legend related by Plutarch, was heard out at sea--'Great Pan is dead'--rose up from every heart; the voice of an incredulous age proclaimed the coming end of paganism. The oracles were dumb." There was no vision in the land. All faith in a beneficent overruling Providence was lost, and the hope of immortality was well-nigh gone. The doctrines of a resurrection and a judgment to come, were objects of derisive mockery.921Philosophy directed her attention solely to the problem ofindividual well-being on earth; it became simply a philosophy of life, and not, as with Plato, "a preparation for death." The grosser minds sought refuge in the doctrines of Epicurus. They said, "Pleasure is the chief good, the end of life is to enjoy yourself;" to this end "dismiss the fear of gods, and, above all, the fear of death." The nobler souls found an asylum with the Stoics. They said, "Fata nos ducunt--The Fates lead us! Live conformable to reason. Endure and abstain!" Notwithstanding numerous and serious errors, the ethical system of the Stoics was wonderfully pure. This must be confessed by any one who reads the "Enchiridion" of Epictetus, and the "Meditations" of Aurelius. "The highest end of life is to contemplate truth and to obey the Eternal Reason. God is to be reverenced above all things, and universally submitted to. The noblest office of reason is to subjugate passion and conduct to virtue. Virtue is the supreme good, which is to be pursued for its own sake, and not from fear or hope. That is sufficient for happiness which is seated only in the mind, and therefore independent of external things. The consciousness of well-doing is reward enough without the applause of others. And no fear of loss, or pain, or even death, must be suffered to turn us aside from truth and virtue."922
Footnote 921:(return)Acts xvii. 32.
Footnote 922:(return)Marcus Aurelius.
The preparatory office of Christianity in the field of ethics is further seen,
II.In the fact that, by an experiment conducted on the largest scale, it demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a perfect ideal of moral excellence, and develop the moral forces necessary to secure its realization.
We have seen that the moral idea in Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca rose to a sublime height, and that, under its influence, they developed a noble and heroic character. At the same time it must be conceded that their ethical system was marked by signal blemishes and radical defects. After all its excellence, it did not give roundness, completeness, and symmetry to moral life. The elements whichreally purify and ennoble man, and lend grace and beauty to life, were utterly wanting. Their systems were rather a discipline of the reason than a culture of the heart. The reason held in check the lower passions and propensities of the nature but it did not evoke the softer, gentler, purer emotions of the soul. The cardinal virtues of the ancient ethical systems are Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Courage, all which are in the last analysis reduced to Wisdom. Humility, Meekness, Forgiveness of injuries, Love of even enemies, Universal Benevolence, Real Philanthropy, the graces which give beauty to character and bless society, are scarcely known. It is true that in Epictetus and Seneca we have some counsels to humility, to forbearance, and forgiveness; but it must be borne in mind that Christianity was now in the air, exerting an indirect influence beyond the limits of the labors of the indefatigable missionaries of the Cross.923By their predecessors, these qualities were disparaged rather than upheld. Resentment of injuries was applauded as a virtue, and meekness was proclaimed a defect and a weakness. They knew nothing of a forgiving spirit, and were strangers to the charity "which endureth all things, hopeth all things, and never fails." The enlarged philanthrophy which overleaps the bounds of kindred and nationality, and embraces a common humanity in its compassionate regards and benevolent efforts, was unknown. Socrates, the noblest of all the Grecians, was in no sense cosmopolitan in his feeling. His whole nature and character wore a Greek impress. He could scarce be tempted to go beyond the gates of Athens, and his care was all for the Athenian people. He could not conceive an universal philanthropy. Plato, in his solicitude to reduce his ideal state to a harmonious whole, answering to his idea of Justice, sacrificed the individual. He superseded private property, broke up the sacred relations of family and home, degraded woman, and tolerated slavery. Selfishness was to be overcome, and political order maintained, by a rigidcommunism. To harmonize individual rights and national interests, was the wisdom reserved for the fishermen of Galilee. The whole method of Plato's "Politeia," breathes the spirit of legalism in all its severity, untempered by the spirit of Love. This was the living force which was wanting to give energy to the ideals of the reason and conscience, to furnish high motive to virtue, to prompt to deeds of heroic sacrifice and suffering for the good of others; and this could not be inspired by philosophy, nor constrained by legislation. This love must descend from above. "The Platonic love" was a mere intellectual appreciation of beauty, and order, and proportion, and excellence. It was not the love of man as the offspring and image of God, as the partaker of a common nature, and the heir of a common immortality. Such love was first revealed on earth by the incarnate Son of God, and can only be attained by human hearts under the inspiration of his teaching and life, and the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit. "Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." To "love our neighbor as ourself" is the golden precept of the Son of God, who is incarnate Love. The equality of all men as "the offspring of God" had been nominally recognized by the Stoic philosophers; its realization had been rendered possible to the popular thought by Roman conquest, law, and jurisprudence; these had prepared the way for its fullest announcement and practical recognition by the world. At this providential juncture St. Paul appears on Mars' Hill, and in the presence of the assembled philosophers proclaims, "God hath made of one blood all nations of men." A lofty ideal of moral excellence had been attained by Plato--the conception of a high and inflexible morality, which contrasted most vividly with the depravity which prevailed in Athenian society. The education "of the public assemblies, the courts, the theatres, or wherever the multitude gathered" was unfavorable to virtue. And the inadequacy of all mere human teaching to resist this current of evil, and save the young men of the age from ruin, is touchingly and mournfully confessed by Plato. "Thereis not, there never was, there never will be a moral education possible that can countervail the education of which these are the dispensers; that is,humaneducation: I except, with the proverb, that which is Divine. And, truly, any soul that in such governments escapes the common wreck, can only escapeby the special favor of heaven."924He affirms again and again that man can not by himself rise to purity and goodness. "Virtue is not natural to man, neither is it to be learned, but it comes to us by a divine influence. Virtue is the gift of God in those who possess it."925That "gift of God" was about to be bestowed, in all its fullness of power and blessing, "through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Footnote 923:(return)Seneca lived in the second century; Epictetus, in the latter part of the first century.
Footnote 924:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. vi., vii.
Footnote 925:(return)"Meno;" see conclusion.
In the department ofreligious feelingandsentiment, the propædeutic office of Greek philosophy is seen, in general, in the revealing of the immediate spiritual wants of the soul, and the distinct presentation of the problem which Christianity alone can solve.
I.It awakened in man the sense of distance and estrangement from God, and the need of a Mediator--"a daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both"926
Footnote 926:(return)Job ix. 33.
During the period of unconscious and unreflective theism, the sentiment of the Divine was one of objective nearness and personal intimacy. The gods interposed directly in the affairs of men, and held frequent and familiar intercourse with our race. They descend to the battle-field of Troy, and mingle in the bloody strife. They grace the wedding-feast by their presence, and heighten the gladness with celestial music. They visit the poor and the stranger, and sometimes clothe the old and shrivelled beggar with celestial beauty. They inspire their favorites with strength and courage, and fill their mouths with wisdom and eloquence. They manifest their presence by signs and wonders, by visions and dreams, by auguries and prophetic voices. But more frequently than all, they are seen in the ordinary phenomena of nature, the sunshine and storm, thewinds and tempests, the hail and rain. The natural is, in fact, the supernatural, and all the changes of nature are the movement and action of the Divine. The feeling of dependence is immediate and universal, and worship is the natural and spontaneous act of man.
But the period of reflection is inevitable. Man turns his inquiring gaze towards nature and desires, by an imperfect effort of physical induction, to reach "the first principle and cause of things." Soon he discovers the prevalence of uniformity in nature, the actions of physical properties and agencies, and he catches some glimpses of the reign of universal law. The natural tendency of this discovery is obvious in the weakening of his sense of dependence on the immediate agency of God. The Egyptians told Herodotus that, as their fields were regularly irrigated by the waters of the Nile, they were less dependent on God than the Greeks, whose lands were watered by rains, and who must perish if Jupiter did not send them showers.927As man advances in the field of mere physical inquiry, God recedes; from the region of explained phenomena, he retires into the region of unexplained phenomena--the border-land of mystery. The gods are driven from the woods and streams, the winds and waves. Neptune does not absolutely control the seas, nor Æolus the winds. The Divine becomes, no more a physical ἀρχή--a nature-power, but a Supreme Mind, an ineffable Spirit, an invisible God, the Supreme Essence of Essences, the Supreme Idea of Ideas (εἶδος αὐτὸ καθ᾿ αὑτό) apprehended by human reason alone, but having an independent, eternal, substantial, personal being. Through the instrumentality of Platonism, the idea of God becomes clearer and purer. Man had learned that communion with the Divinity was something more than an apotheosis of humanity, or a pantheistic absorption. He caught glimpses of a higher and holier union. He had surrendered the ideal of a national communion with God, and of personal protection through a federal religion, and now was thrown back uponhimself to find some channel of personal approach to God. But alas! he could not find it. A God so vastly elevated beyond human comprehension, who could only be apprehended by the most painful effort of abstract thought; a God so infinitely removed from man by the purity and rectitude of his character; a God who was all pure reason, seemed alien to all the yearnings and sympathies of the human heart; and such a God, dwelling in pure light, seemed inapproachable and inacessible to man.928The purifying of the religious idea had evoked a new ideal, and this ideal was painfully remote. By the energy of abstract thought man had striven to pierce the veil, and press into "the Holy of Holies," to come into the presence of God, and he had failed. And he had sought by moral discipline, by self-mortification, by inward purification, to raise himself to that lofty plane of purity, where he might catch some glimpses of the vision of a holy God, and still he failed. Nay, more, he had tried the power of prayer. Socrates, and Plato, and Cleanthes had bowed the knee and moved the lips in prayer. The emperor Aurelius, and the slave Epictetus had prayed, and prayer, no doubt, intensified their longing, and sharpened and agonized their desire, but it did not raise them to a satisfying and holykoinoniain the divine life. "It seems to me"--said Plato--as Homer says of Minerva, that she removed the mist from before the eyes of Diomede,
'That he might clearly see 'twixt Gods and men.'
so must he, in the first place, remove from your soul the mist that now dwells there, and then apply those things through which you will be able to know929and rightly pray to God.
Footnote 927:(return)Herodotus, vol. ii. bk. ii. ch. xiii. p. 14 (Rawlinson's edition).
Footnote 928:(return)"To discover the Maker and Father of the universe is a hard task;.... to make him known to all is impossible."--"Timæus," ch. ix.
Footnote 929:(return)"Second Alcibiades," § 23.
To develop this innate desire and "feeling after God" was the grand design of providence in "fixing the times" of the Greek nation, and "the boundaries of their habitation."930Man was brought, through a period of discipline, to feel his needof a personal relation to God. He was made to long for a realizing sense of his presence--to desire above all things a Father, a Counsellor, and a Friend--a living ear into which he might groan his anguish, or hymn his joy; and a living heart that could beat towards him in compassion, and prompt immediate succor and aid. The idea of a pure Spiritual Essence without form, and without emotion, pervading all, and transcending all, is too vague and abstract to yield us comfort, and to exert over us any persuasive power. "Our moral weakness shrinks from it in trembling awe. The heart can not feed on sublimities. We can not make a home of cold magnificence; we can not take immensity by the hand."931Hence the need and the desire that God shall condescendingly approach to man, and by some manifestation of himself in human form, and through the sensibilities of the human heart, commend himself to the heart of man--in other words, the need of anIncarnation. Thus did the education of our race, by the dispensation of philosophy, prepare the way for him who was consciously or unconsciously "the Desire of Nations," and the deepening earnestness and spiritual solicitude of the heathen world heralded the near approach of Him who was not only "the Hope of Israel" but "the Saviour of the world."
Footnote 930:(return)Acts xvii. 26, 27.
Footnote 931:(return)Caird.
The idea of anIncarnationwas not unfamiliar to human thought, it was no new or strange idea to the heathen mind. The numberless metamorphoses of Grecian mythology, the incarnations of Brahm, the avatars of Vishnu, and the human form of Krishna had naturalized the thought.932So that when the people of Lystra saw the apostles Paul and Barnabas exercising supernatural powers of healing, they said, "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" and they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul, Mercurius. The idea in its more definite form may have been, and indeed was, communicated to the world through the agency of the dispersed Jews. So that Virgil, the Roman poet, who was contemporary with Christ, seems to re-echo the prophecy of Isaiah--
Footnote 932:(return)Young's "Christ of History," p. 248.