Professor Cocker, in his work on "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," has devoted much thought to show that philosophy was a preparation for Christianity, and that Greek civilization was an essential condition to the progress of the Gospel. He points out how Greek intelligence and culture, literature and art, trade and colonization, the universal spread of the Greek language, and especially the results of Greek philosophy, were "schoolmasters to bring men to Christ." He quotes a striking passage from Pressensé to this effect. Philosophy in Greece, says Pressensé, had its place in the divine plan. It dethroned the false gods. It purified the idea of divinity.
Cocker sums up this work of preparation done by Greek philosophy, as seen,—
"1. In the release of the popular mind from polytheistic notions, and the purifying and spiritualizing of the theistic idea.
"2. In the development of the theistic argument in a logical form.
"3. In the awakening and enthronement of conscience as a law of duty, and in the elevation and purification of the moral idea.
"4. 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.
"5. It awakened and deepened the consciousness of guilt and the desire for redemption."[267]
The large culture of Greece was evidently adapted to Christianity. The Jewish mind recognized no such need as that of universal culture, and this tendency of Christianity could only have found room and opportunity among those who had received the influence of Hellenic culture.
The points of contact between Christianity and Greek civilization are therefore these:—
1. The character of God, considered in both as an immanent, ever-working presence, and not merely as a creating and governing will outside the universe.
2. The character of man, as capable of education and development, who is not merely to obey as a servant, but to co-operate as a friend, with the divine will, and grow up in all things.
3. The idea of duty, as a reasonable service, and not a yoke.
4. God's revelations, as coming, not only in nature, but also in inspired men, and in the intuitions of the soul; a conception which resulted in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
The good of polytheism was that it saw something divine in nature. By dividing God into numberless deities, it was able to conceive of some divine power in all earthly objects. Hence Wordsworth, complaining that we can see little of this divinity now in nature, cries out:—