Chapter XV (1)

THE PROPÆDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY _(continued)_.

"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 in _the 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; he recognizes 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_.[899] In 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.[901] This 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: Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 46.]

[Footnote 900: "Republic," bk. i. § 6.]

[Footnote 901: Ibid., bk. i. § 12.]

The era of _popular and unconscious morality_ is 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.[902] A 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, under the three-fold influence of right moral feeling, mutual and fear of the divine displeasure."[903]

[Footnote 902: Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 51.]

[Footnote 903: Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 167.]

The _transitional, skeptical_, or _sophistical era_ begins 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. Grote[904] has 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"[905] without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete 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,[906] but 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 is _just_ and _good_ in 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 that _nothing 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."[907] And, 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.[908] They who "make the laws, make them for their own advantage."[909] There is no such thing as Eternal Right. "That which _appears_ just and honorable to each city is so for that city, as long as the opinion prevails."[910]

[Footnote 904: "History of Greece."]

[Footnote 905: Aristotle's "Ethics," vol. i. ch. ii.]

[Footnote 906: "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: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. xvii.]

[Footnote 908: "Theætetus," § 23.]

[Footnote 909: "Gorgias," §§ 85-89.]

[Footnote 910: "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_, or _conscious 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,"[911] and 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?"[912] And 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.[913] He 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 philosophy was not so much a _doctrine_ as a _life_. "What is remarkable in him is not the _system_ but the _man_. 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,[914] who 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."[914]

[Footnote 911: Homer, Hesiod, etc.]

[Footnote 912: "Memorabilia," bk. i. ch. i. p. 16.]

[Footnote 913: Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 122.]

[Footnote 914: Watson's "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 374.]

[Footnote 915: 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 his _to daimonion_ or _daimonion ti_--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 of Socrates 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 ([Greek: omoiosis Theô]) 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 that _await 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."[916] He rises above 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."[918] It 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: "Republic," bk. x. ch. xii.]

[Footnote 917: "Gorgias," §§ 59-80.]

[Footnote 918: Ibid., § 137.]

[Footnote 919: 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: "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 time embodied 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.[921] Philosophy directed her attention solely to the problem of individual 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: Acts xvii. 32.]

[Footnote 922: 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 which really 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.[923] By 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 rigid communism. 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. "There is 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, _human_ education: I except, with the proverb, that which is Divine. And, truly, any soul that in such governments escapes the common wreck, can only escape _by the special favor of heaven."_[924] He 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."[925] That "gift of God" was about to be bestowed, in all its fullness of power and blessing, "_through Jesus Christ our Lord_."

[Footnote 923: Seneca lived in the second century; Epictetus, in the latter part of the first century.]

[Footnote 924: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. vi., vii.]

[Footnote 925: "Meno;" see conclusion.]

In the department of _religious feeling_ and _sentiment_, 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: 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, the winds 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.[927] As 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 archê--a nature-power, but a Supreme Mind, an ineffable Spirit, an invisible God, the Supreme Essence of Essences, the Supreme Idea of Ideas (eidos auto kath auto) 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 upon himself 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.[928] The 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 holy _koinonia_ in 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 know[929] and rightly pray to God.

[Footnote 927: Herodotus, vol. ii. bk. ii. ch. xiii. p. 14 (Rawlinson's edition).]

[Footnote 928: "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: "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."[930] Man was brought, through a period of discipline, to feel his need of 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."[931] Hence 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 an _Incarnation_. 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: Acts xvii. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 931: Caird.]

The idea of an _Incarnation_ was 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.[932] So 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--

The last age decreëd by the Fates is come,
And a new frame of all things does begin;
A holy progeny from heaven descends
Auspicious in his birth, which puts an end
To the iron age, and from which shall arise
A golden age, most glorious to behold.

[Footnote 932: Young's "Christ of History," p. 248.]

II. _Finally, Greek philosophy prepared the way for Christianity by awakening and deepening the consciousness of guilt, and the desire for Redemption_.

The consciousness of sin, and the consequent need of expiation for sin, were gradually unfolded in the Greek mind. The idea of sin was at first revealed in a confused and indefinite feeling of some external, supernatural, and bewildering influence which man can not successfully resist; but yet so in harmony with the sinner's inclination, that he can not divest himself of all responsibility. "Homer has no word answering in comprehensiveness or depth of meaning to the word _sin_, as it is used in the Bible..... The noun _amartia_ which is appropriated to express this idea in the Greek of the New Testament, does not occur in the Homeric poems..... The word which is most frequently employed to express wrong-doing of every kind is _atê_, with its corresponding verb..... The radical signification of the word seems to be a befooling--a depriving one of his senses and his reason, as by unseasonable sleep, and excess of wine, joined with the influence of evil companions, and the power of destiny, or the deity. Hence, the Greek imagination, which impersonated every great power, very naturally conceived of Atê as a person, a sort of omnipresent and universal cause of folly and sin, of mischief and misery, who, though the daughter of Jupiter, yet once fooled or misled Jupiter himself, and thenceforth, cast down from heaven to earth, walks with light feet over the heads of men, and makes all things go wrong. Hence, too, when men come to their senses, and see what folly and wrong they have perpetrated, they cast the blame on Atê, and so, ultimately, on Jupiter and the gods."[933]

[Footnote 933: Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," pp. 174, 175.]

"Oft hath this matter been by Greeks discussed,
And I their frequent censure have incurred:
Yet was not I the cause; but Jove, and Fate,
And gloomy Erinnys, who combined to throw
A strong delusion o'er my mind, that day
I robb'd Achilles of his lawful prize.
What could I do? a Goddess all o'erruled,
Daughter of Jove, dread Até, baleful power
Misleading all; with light step she moves,
Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men.
With blighting touch, and many hath caused to err."[934]

And yet, though Agamemnon here attempts to shuffle off the guilt of his transgression upon Até, Jove, and Fate, yet at other times he confesses his folly and wrong, and makes no attempt to cast the responsibility on the gods.[935] Though misled by a "baleful power," he was not compelled. Though tempted by an evil goddess, he yet followed his own sinful passions, and therefore he owns himself responsible.

To satisfy the demands of divine justice, to show its hatred of sin, and to deter others from transgression, sin is punished. Punishment is the penalty due to sin; in the language of Homer, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. When the transgressor is punished he is said to "pay off," or "pay back" his crimes; in other words, to expatiate or atone for them.

"If not at once,
Yet soon or late will Jove assert their claim,
And heavy penalty the perjured pay
With their own blood, their children's, and their wives'."[936]

At the same time the belief is expressed that the gods may be, and often are, propitiated by prayers and sacrifices, and thus the penalty is remitted.

"The Gods themselves, in virtue, honor, strength,
Excelling thee, may yet be mollified;
For they when mortals have transgressed, or fail'd
To do aright, by sacrifice and pray'r,
Libations and burnt-off'rings, may be sooth'd."[937]

[Footnote 934: "Iliad," bk. xix. l. 91-101 (Lord Derby's translation).]

[Footnote 935: Ibid., bk. ix. l. 132-136.]

[Footnote 936: Ibid., bk. iv. l. 185-188.]

[Footnote 937: Ibid., bk. ix. l. 581-585.]

Polytheism, then, as Dr. Schaff has remarked, had the voice of conscience, and a sense, however obscure, of sin. It felt the need of reconciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation by prayer, penance, and sacrifice.[938]

The sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the absolute need of expiation, is determined with increasing clearness and definiteness in the tragic poets.

The first great law which the Tragedians recognize, as a law written on the heart, is "that the sinner must suffer for his sins." The connection between sin and suffering is constantly recognized as a natural and necessary connection, like that between sowing and reaping.

A haughty spirit, blossoming, bears a crop
Of woe, and reaps a harvest of despair.[939]

"Lust and violence beget lust and violence, and vengeance too, at the appointed time."[940] "Impiety multiplies and perpetuates itself."[941] "The sinner pays the debt he contracted, ends the career that he begins,"[942] "and drinks to the dregs the cup of cursing which he himself had filled."[943] Conscience is the instrument in the hands of Justice and Vengeance by which the Most High inflicts punishment. The retributions of sin are "wrought out by God."

The consequences of great crimes, especially in high places, extend to every person and every thing connected with them. "The country and the country's gods are polluted."[944] "The army and the people share in the curse."[945] "The earth itself is polluted with the shedding of blood,"[946] "and even the innocent and the virtuous who share the enterprises of the wicked may be involved in their ruin, as the pious man must sink with the ungodly when he embarks in the same ship."[947]

[Footnote 938: Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 258.]

[Footnote 938: Æschylus, "Persæ," l. 821.]

[Footnote 940: "Agamemnon," l. 763.]

[Footnote 941: Ibid., l. 788.]

[Footnote 942: Ibid., l. 1529.]

[Footnote 943: Ibid., l. 1397.]

[Footnote 944: Ibid., l. 1645.]

[Footnote 945: "Persæ," _passim._]

[Footnote 946: "Sup.," 265.]

[Footnote 947: "Theb.," p. 602.]

The pollution and curse of sin, when once contracted by an individual, or entailed upon a family, will rest upon them and pursue them till the polluted individual or the hated and accursed race is extinct, unless in some way the sin can be expiated, or some god interpose to arrest the penalty. The criminal must die by the hand of justice, and even in Hades vengeance will still pursue him.[948] Others may in time be washed away by ablutions, worn away by exile and pilgrimage, and expiated by offerings of blood.[949] But great crimes can not be washed away; "For what expiation is there for blood when once it has fallen on the ground."[950] Thus the law (_[Greek: nomos]_)--for so it is expressly called--as from an Attic Sinai, rolls its reverberating thunders, and pronounces its curses upon sin, from act to act and from chorus to chorus of that grand trilogy--the "Agamemnon," the "Choephoroe," and the "Eumenides."

[Footnote 948: "Sup.," l. 227.]

[Footnote 949: "Eum.," l. 445 seq.]

[Footnote 950: "Choeph.," l. 47.]

But after the law comes the gospel. First the controversy, then the reconciliation. A dim consciousness of sin and retribution as a fact, and of reconciliation as a _want_, seems to have revealed itself even in the darkest periods of history. This consciousness underlies not a few of the Greek tragedies. "The 'Prometheus Bound' was followed by the 'Prometheus Unbound,' reconciled and restored through the intervention of Jove's son. The 'oedipus Tyrannus' of Sophocles was completed by the 'oedipus Colonus,' where he dies in peace amid tokens of divine favor. And so the 'Agamemnon' and 'Choephoroe' reach their consummation only in the 'Eumenides,' where the Erinyes themselves are appeased, and the Furies become the gracious ones. This is not, however, without a special divine interposition, and then only after a severe struggle between the powers that cry for justice and those that plead for mercy."

The office and work which, in this trilogy, is assigned to Jove's son, Apollo, must strike every reader as at least a remarkable resemblance, if not a foreshadowing of the Christian doctrine of _reconciliation_. "This becomes yet more striking when we bring into view the relation in which this reconciling work stands to [Greek: Zeus Sôtêr], Jupiter Saviour--[Greek: Zeus tritos], Jupiter the third, who, in connection with Apollo and Athena, consummates the reconciliation. Not only is Apollo a [Greek: Sôtêr], a Saviour, who, having himself been exiled from heaven among men, will pity the poor and needy;[951] not only does Athena sympathize with the defendant at her tribunal, and, uniting the office of advocate and judge, persuade the avenging deities to be appeased;[952] but Zeus is the beginning and end of the whole process. Apollo appears as the advocate of Orestes only at her bidding;[953] Athena inclines to the side of the accused, as the offspring of the brain of Zeus, and of like mind with him."[954] Orestes, after his acquittal, says that he obtained it

"By means of Pallas and of Loxias
And the third Saviour who doth all things sway."[955]

Platonism reveals a still closer affinity with Christianity in its doctrine of sin, and its sense of the need of salvation. Plato is sacredly jealous for the honor and purity of the divine character, and rejects with indignation every hypothesis which would make God the author of sin. "God, inasmuch as he is good, can not be the cause of all things, as the common doctrine represents him to be. On the contrary, he is the author of only a small part of human affairs; of the larger part he is not the author; for our evil things far outnumber our good things. The good things we must ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil."[956] The doctrine of the poets, which would in some way charge on the gods the errors of men, he sternly resists. We must express our disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, if guilty of such foolish blunders about the gods as to tell us[957]

'Fast by the threshold of Jove's court are placed
Two casks, one stored with evil, one with good,'

And that he for whom the Thunderer mingles both

'He leads a life checker'd with good and ill.'

[Footnote 951: "Sup.," l. 214.]

[Footnote 952: "Eum.," l. 970.]

[Footnote 953: Ibid., l. 616.]

[Footnote 954: Ibid., l. 664, 737.]

[Footnote 955: Tyler's "Theology of the Greek Poets," especially ch. v., from which the above materials are drawn.]

[Footnote 956: "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 957: "Iliad," xxiv., l. 660.]

Nor can we let our young people know that, in the words of Æschylus--

"'When to destruction God will plague a house
He plants among the members guilt and sin.'"[958]

Whatever in the writings of Homer and the tragic poets give countenance to the notion that God is, in the remotest sense the author of sin, must be expunged. Here is clearly a great advance in ethical conceptions.

The great defect in the ethical system of Plato was the identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of man--"the irascible and concupiscible elements," fashioned by the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's nature, which is derived immediately from God--the Supreme Good, naturally chooses the good as its supreme end and destination. Hence he adopted the Socratic maxim "that no man is willingly evil," that is, no man deliberately chooses evil as evil, but only as a _seeming_ good--he does not choose evil as an end, though he may choose it voluntarily as a means. Plato manifests great solicitude to guard this maxim from misconception and abuse. Man has, in his judgment, the power to act in harmony with his higher reason, or contrary to reason; to obey the voice of conscience or the clamors of passion, and consequently he is the object of praise or blame, reward or punishment. "When a man does not consider himself, but others, as the cause of his own sins,.... and even seeks to excuse himself from blame, he dishonors and injures his own soul; so, also, when contrary to reason.... he indulges in pleasure, he dishonors it by filling it with vice and remorse."[959] The work and effort of life, the end of this probationary economy, is to make reason triumphant over passion, and discipline ourselves to a purer and nobler life.

[Footnote 958: "Republic," bk. ii. ch, xviii., xix.]

[Footnote 959: "Laws," bk. v. ch. i.]

The obstacles to a virtuous life are, however, confessedly numberless, and, humanly speaking, insurmountable. To raise one's self above the clamor of passion, the power of evil, the bondage of the flesh, is acknowledged, in mournful language, to be a hopeless task. A cloud of sadness shades the brow of Plato as he contemplates the fallen state of man. In the "Phædrus" he describes, in gorgeous imagery, the purity, and beauty, and felicity of the soul in its anterior and primeval state, when, charioteering through the highest arch of heaven in company with the Deity, it contemplated the divine justice and beauty; but "this happy life," says he, "we forfeited by our transgression." Allured by strange affections, our souls forgot the sacred things that we were made to contemplate and love--we _fell_. And now, in our fallen state, the soul has lost its pristine beauty and excellence. It has become more disfigured than was Glaucus, the seaman "whose primitive form was not recognizable, so disfigured had he become by his long dwelling in the sea."[960] To restore this lost image of the good,--to regain "this primitive form," is not the work of man, but God. Man can not save himself. "Virtue is not natural to man, neither is it to be learned, but it comes by a divine influence. _Virtue, is the gift of God_."[961] He needs a discipline, "an education which is divine." If he is saved from the common wreck, it must be "by the special favor of Heaven."[962] He must be delivered from sin, if ever delivered, by the interposition of God.

[Footnote 960: "Republic," bk. x. ch. xi.]

[Footnote 961: "Meno."]

[Footnote 962: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. vi., vii.]