Philosophy, led the Greeks to Christ, as the Law did the Jewish. The wisdom of the world in their efforts to give truth and happiness to the human soul, was foolishness with God, and the wisdom of God—Christ crucified—was foolishness with the philosophers, in relation to the same subject; yet it was divine Philosophy. An adopted means, and the only adequate means, to accomplish the necessary end. Said an apostle in speaking upon this subject, the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ Crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block and unto the Greeks foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God, and the wisdom of God. The Jews, while they require a sign, did not perceive that miracles, in themselves, were not adopted to produce affection. And the Greeks, while they sought after wisdom, did not perceive that all the wisdom of the Gentiles, would never work love in the heart. But the apostle preached—Christ crucified—an exhibition of self-denial, of suffering, and of self-sacrificing; love and mercy, endured in behalf of men, which, when received by faith, became "The power of God, and the wisdom of God," to produce love and obedience in the human soul. Paul understood the efficacy of the Cross. He looked to Calvary and beheld Christ crucified as the Sun of the Gospel system. Not, as the Moon, reflecting cold and borrowed rays; but as the Sun of righteousness, glowing with radiant mercy, and pouring warm beams of life and love into the open bosom of the believer.
It is stranger that among philosophers of succeeding ages there has not been wisdom sufficient to discover, from the constitutional necessities of the human spirit, that demand for the instruction and aid of the Messiah which Socrates and Plato discovered, even in a comparatively dark age. And in the whole history of human mind there is not a more instructive chapter at once stranger and sad, interesting to our curiosity and mortifying to our pride, than the history of Platonic philosophy sinking into gnosticism, or in other words, of Greek philosophy merging in Oriental Mysticism; showing, on the one hand the decline and fall of philosophy, and, on the other, the rise and progress of Syncretism. Perhaps, also, it is the most remarkable instance on record, that out of the religious, moral, and political, in one word, the intellectual corruption which brings on the fall of great and mighty nations, as it doubtless was with Babylon and Thebes, and so we know it to have been with Athens and Rome, God's providence educes pure principles and higher hopes for the nations and people that rise out of their ashes, and who, if they will be taught wisdom and principle, righteousness and peace, by the errors and sufferings of those who have preceded them, may rise to higher destinies in the history of men's conduct and God's providence.
The reader most sincerely is asked to devote the required time in any public library and study this very interesting subject of "Gnosticism" from which the most detrimental system in the Christian era was originated, "The Monasticism." In this ecclesiastical order the writer had been distinguished with the rank of "Archimandrites."
H. R. H. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, K. G., etc.
To what extent the celibacy of monks and nuns debased the fundamental principles of Christianity there are a number of publications whose authors are eye-witnesses of the orgies practised in their own monasteries, and the writer in his superior office in two of the leading monasteries had had the opportunity to acquire all the necessary evidence to demolish every one of these hell-pits, to many a young man and young woman innocent, otherwise, before entering there, and drive away all these parasites that have no consideration to any civil or moral law and live upon the sweat of the brow of the long-suffering Church slaves.
Within the bounds of philosophy, at this stage of our progress it will be useful to recapitulate the conclusions at which we have arrived, and thus make a point of rest from which to extend our observations further into the plan of God for redeeming the world, for "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." This view is the more appropriate as we have known in the history of God's providence with Israel, which presents them as a people prepared (so far as imperfect material could be prepared) to receive the model which God might desire to impress upon the nation. They were bound to each other by all the ties of which human nature is susceptible, and thus rendered compact and united, so that every thing national, whether in sentiment or practise would be received and cherished with unanimous, and fervent, and lasting attachment; and, furthermore, by a long and rigorous bondage, they had been rendered, for the time being at least, humble and dependant. Thus they were disciplined by a curse of providence, adopted to fit them to receive instruction from their Benefactor with a teachable and grateful spirit.
Their minds were shaken off from idols; and Jehovah, by a revelation made to them, setting forth his name and nature, had revealed himself as Divine Being, and by his works had manifested his Almighty power: so that when their minds were disabused of wrong views of the Godhead, an idea of the first, true, and essential nature of God was revealed to them, and they were thus prepared to receive a knowledge of the attributes of that Divine essence.