[Footnote 925: ][ (return) ] "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: ][ (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, 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 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 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: ][ (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.