It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek philosophy when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Disinterested pursuit of truth is always a great and noble task. The imperishable want of the human mind to go back to first principles, suffices to prove that this principle is divine. We may abuse speculation; we may turn it into one of the most powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by speculation in the presence of religion, have condemned it as mischievous in itself, confounding in their unjust prejudice its use and its abuse. But, for all serious thinkers, philosophy is one of the highest titles of nobility that humanity possesses: and when we consider its mission previous to Christianity, we feel convinced that it had its place in the Divine plan. It was not religion in itself that philosophy, through its noblest representatives, combated, but polytheism. It dethroned the false gods. Adopting what was best in paganism, philosophy employed it as an instrument to destroy paganism, and thus clear the way for definite religion. Above all, it effectually contributed to purify the idea of Divinity, though this purification was but an approximation. If at times it caught glimpses of the highest spiritualism, yet it was unable to protect itself against the return and reaction of Oriental dualism. In spite of this imperfection, which in its way served the cause of Christianity by demonstrating the necessity of revelation, men like Socrates and Plato fulfilled amongst their people a really sublime mission.
They were to the heathen world the great prophets of the human conscience, which woke up at their call. And the awakening of the moral sense was at once the glory and ruin of philosophy; for conscience, once aroused, could only be satisfied by One greater than they, and must necessarily reject all systems which proved themselves insufficient to realize the moral idea they had evoked.
"But to perish thus, and for such a cause, is a high honor to a philosophy. It was this made the philosophy of Greece, like the Hebrew laws, though in an inferior sense, a schoolmaster that led to Jesus Christ, according to the expression of Clement of Alexandria. Viewed in this light, it was a true gift of God, and had, too, the shadow of good things to come, awakening the presentiment and desire of them, though it could not communicate them. Nor can we conceive a better way to prepare for the advent of Him who was to be 'the Desire of Nations' before becoming their Saviour." [873]
[Footnote 873: ][ (return) ] "Religions before Christ," pp. 101, 102.
In previous chapters we have endeavored to sketch the history of the development of metaphysical thought, of moral feeling and idea, and of religious sentiment and want, which characterized Grecian civilization. In now offering a brief résumé of the history of that development, with the design of more fully exhibiting the preparatory office it fulfilled for Christianity, we shall assume that the mind of the reader has already been furnished and disciplined by preparatory principles. He can scarce have failed to recognize that this development obeyed a general law, however modified by exterior and geographical conditions; the same law, in fact, which governs the development of all individual finite minds, and which law may be formulated thus:--All finite mind develops itself, first, in instinctive determinations and spontaneous faiths; then in rising doubt, and earnest questioning, and ill-directed inquiry; and, finally, in systematic philosophic thought, and rational belief. These different stages succeed each other in the individual mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood; secondly, the undirected and unsettled force of youth; and, thirdly, the wisdom of mature age. And these different stages have also succeeded each other in the universal mind of humanity. There has been, 1st. The era of spontaneous beliefs--of popular and semi-conscious theism, morality, and religion, 2d. The transitional age--the age of doubt, of inquiry, and of ill-directed mental effort, ending in fruitless sophism, or in skepticism. 3d. The philosophic or conscious age--the age of reflective consciousness, in which, by the analysis of thought, the first principles of knowledge are attained, the necessary laws of thought are discovered, and man arrives at positive convictions, and rational beliefs. In the history of Grecian civilization, the first is the Homeric age; the second is the pre-Socratic age, ending with the Sophists; and the third is the grand Socratic period. History is thus the development of the fundamental elements of humanity, according to an established law, and under conditions which are ordained and supervised by the providence of God. "The unity of civilization is in the unity of human nature; its varieties, in the variety of the elements of humanity," which elements have been successively developed in the course of history. All that is fundamental in human nature passes into the movement of civilization. "I say all that is fundamental; for it is the excellency of history to take out, and throw away all that is not necessary and essential. That which is individual shines for a day, and is extinguished forever, or stops at biography." Nothing endures, except that which is fundamental and true--that which is vital, and organizes itself, develops itself, and arrives at an historical existence. "Therefore as human nature is the matter and basis of history, history is, so to speak, the judge of human nature, and historical analysis is the counter-proof of psychological analysis." [874]
[Footnote 874: ][ (return) ] Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 31.
Nature, individual mind, and collective humanity, all obey the law of progressive development; otherwise there could be no history, for history is only of that which has movement and progress. Now, all progress is from the indefinite to the definite, from the inorganic to the organic and vital, from the instinctive to the rational, from a dim, nebulous self-feeling to a high reflective consciousness, from sensuous images to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. This progressive development of nature and humanity has not been a series of creations de novo, without any relation, in matter or form, to that which preceded. All of the present was contained in embryonic infoldment in the past, and the past has contributed its results to the present. [875] The present, both in nature, and history, and civilization, is, so to speak, the aggregate and sum-total of the past. As the natural history of the earth may now be read in the successive strata and deposits which form its crust, so the history of humanity may be read in the successive deposits of thought and language, of philosophy and art, which register its gradual progression. As the paleontological remains imbedded in the rocks present a succession of organic types which gradually improve in form and function, from the first sea-weed to the palm-tree, and from the protozoa to the highest vertebrate, so the history of ancient philosophy presents a gradual progress in metaphysical, ethical, and theistic conceptions, from the unreflective consciousness of the Homeric age, to the high reflective consciousness of the Platonic period. And as all the successive forms of life in pre-Adamic ages were a preparation for and a prophecy of the coming of man, so the advancing forms of philosophic thought, during the grand ages of Grecian civilization, were a preparation and a prophecy of the coming of the Son of God.
[Footnote 875: ][ (return) ] The writer would not be understood as favoring the idea that this development is simply the result of "natural law." The connection between the past and the present is not a material, but a mental connection. It is the bond of Creative Thought and Will giving to organic forces a foreseen direction towards the working out of a grand plan. See Agassiz, "Contributions to Natural History," vol. i. pp. 9, 10; Duke of Argyll, "Reign of Law," ch. v.
We shall now endeavor to trace this process of gradual preparation for Christianity in the Greek mind--