The popular religion of Greece was a religion of the senses; it had little or no hold on the soul and none at all on the intellect. In its first developments it was the religion of patriotism—patriotism elevated into a divine sentiment. Its gods and goddesses were the supposed founders and promoters of the state. In its later developments it was the religion of beauty and art—an adoration of the ideal in form and feature—and its gods and goddesses became the gods and goddesses of beauty; hence the production of those masterpieces in architecture and art which are still so despairingly inimitable. If art alone could ensure the perpetuity of a religion, the religion of Greece would still remain. Neither the eloquence of St. Paul nor the sublime maxims of the Gospel which he preached would have been able to supplant it. But God has implanted in the mind of man the desire for the true as well as for the beautiful; and the possession of truth alone can satisfy the soul.
The Athenians were always in great unrest on religious matters; they were ever inquiring, ever disputing, ever seeking out new gods and new forms of worship, and of course were never satisfied. How, indeed, could they be satisfied, seeing that their religion had no foundation in reason, and hence no foundation in truth? It is one of those strange, unaccountable phenomena in the history of the development of the human mind that a people so intellectual as the Athenians, and having such a grand philosophy, should have held to such an absurd, unreasoning system of religion. Reason and religion in their minds appeared to have been wholly separate. Philosophy had its sphere, religion had its sphere, and there was little or no contact or relation between them. In this connection M. Renan makes a remark which is unusually profound and is well worth quoting. Speaking of the philosophers of Athens, he writes: “The aristocracy of thinkers cared very little for the social wants which made their way through the covering of so many gross religions. Such a divorce is always punished. When philosophy declares that she will not occupy herself with religion, religion replies to her by strangling her. And this is just; for philosophy is nothing, unless it points out a path for humanity—unless it takes a serious view of the infinite problem which is the same for all.”[[162]]
But although Greek philosophy did not seek to reconcile the popular religion of Greece with reason, which in truth it would have been vain to attempt, it did effect a reconciliation of supreme importance to mankind—it reconciled the mind of Greece and of the civilized world to some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and so prepared the way for the coming of Christ and the preaching of St. Paul.
It will hardly be a digression here to look a little into the origin of Greek philosophy and the glimpses of truth to which it attained.
Socrates was the father of Greek philosophy. There were philosophers before him and there were far greater philosophers after him; but those who preceded him, such as Thales and Pythagoras, were physicists, and their speculations were almost wholly confined to the material universe; and those who succeeded him were his pupils, and simply followed up the new field of investigation he had thrown open to them. Socrates was the sage par excellence, the first to turn his looks within and explore the regions of the soul. He was the true founder of moral philosophy, the first to lay down the great maxim that “the proper study of mankind is man.” The human mind, its powers and moral perfectibility, was the one great subject of all his speculations.
Socrates was born in Athens 469 B.C., and he died there 399 B.C. He died a martyr—the first great martyr in the cause of moral truth and liberty of conscience. His father was an indigent sculptor, and for a time he himself followed the same profession, but he early abandoned it for the pursuit of wisdom. He was a self-taught man, and the means that he took to discipline his will and obtain the mastery over his passions and senses were almost the same the saints have used. He practised self-denial and mortification in a remarkable degree; and the forbearance and long-suffering he exercised towards his violent-tempered wife, Xanthippe, betoken the sublimest patience.
The apostle of wisdom, Socrates went about the streets and squares of Athens day after day for many years, questioning, catechising, reasoning with all who would listen to him, insisting ever on the wisdom of his great maxim, Γνώθι σεαυτόν—know thyself. He felt himself commissioned by the gods to teach the higher laws of conscience to the Athenians. Nor was he so very far astray in this, for we cannot fail to recognize the providence of God in the mission of Socrates. He undertook the direction of individual consciences, and his relations towards some of his friends more nearly resembled those of a father confessor than anything else. The tie that bound the brilliant Alcibiades to the uncouth philosopher was peculiarly tender. Socrates saved his life at the battle of Potidæa, and he in turn saved the life of Socrates at the battle of Delium. The friendship that grew up between the profligate youth and the austere sage was a strange one. It was the wonder of all Athens; and whenever they appeared together in public Alcibiades was jeered at by the youth of the city. Socrates for a time exercised the greatest influence over his young friend, and restrained those passions in him which seemed ungovernable. Such was the power of Socrates over minds the least disposed to receive his moral teachings and submit to their restraints. But what were the moral doctrines of Socrates? And in what way were the teachings of this sage a preparation for Christianity, so that he should merit to be called the precursor of St. Paul at Athens? In the first place, Socrates laid down those principles of moral ethics which are also in part the basis of Christian ethics. He taught that the supreme good of man lay in the path of wisdom and virtue, and he declared fidelity to conscience to be the highest law of life. With him began that new departure in philosophy which directed the attention of mankind to mind rather than matter. The pleasures and possessions of the world are contemptible when compared with wisdom and virtue and the perfection of the soul, in the teachings of Socrates as well as in the teachings of St. Paul. In his system, too, every other consideration must yield to the law of conscience and of God. “The word of God,” he says, “ought to be first considered”; and in the exhortation which he is represented in the Phædo as making to his friends to care for their souls he appears to strike the key-note of the Gospel. “O my friends,” he said, “if the soul is truly immortal, should we not take the greatest care of her, not for the short period of life but for eternity? And the danger of neglecting her eternal destiny does appear dreadful” (Phæd. 107). Were not these words the remote echo of the great question of the Gospel, “What doth it profit a man....”? The language of reproof which Socrates addressed to the gross-minded and sensual, whose only aspiration in life is self-indulgence and sensuality, reminds one of the energetic rebukes of St. Paul to those who make a god of their bellies and their passions. And the declaration of liberty of conscience which Socrates made before his judges when his life was trembling in the balance was worthy of a Christian martyr. “A man who is good for anything,” he said, “ought not to calculate the chances of living or dying. He only should consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong, acting the part of a good man or a bad one” (Mem. ii. 1. 28).
Besides these moral teachings, Socrates maintained the existence of a Supreme Being, who exercised a care over all things and preserved harmony in the universe. He did not, however, break through the pagan influences that surrounded him sufficiently to hold to the belief in one only God, but, while he accepted the doctrines of polytheism, he maintained that there was one Supreme Lord, who exercised a universal providence over all things; and he further taught that in the eyes of this Supreme Being all men were equal and there was nothing meritorious but virtue. This was a bold innovation when we remember the Athenian notions of race and caste. He was also of opinion that the gods exercised a watchful care over men and frequently inspired their actions; and the demon of Socrates, about which we hear so much, appears to have been a sort of guardian spirit, whose promptings, though always negative, he constantly looked for and never disregarded. These certainly were somewhat Christian conceptions of morality and of God, and although they are rather offset by other teachings and views of the Greek sage, yet in the main his doctrines foreshadow the light of the Gospel. Were it not, however, for the great disciple who immediately followed up his teaching and threw the light of his genius around it, the system of Socrates, if it can be called a system, would have accomplished little in the way of preparation for Christianity.
For the last eight or nine years of his life Socrates had had Plato for his disciple, and it was through Plato that his teachings were transmitted and developed into that sublime system of philosophic truth which St. Augustine so greatly admired and approved.
Plato, the prince of human intellects, by his unaided reason attained to the knowledge of many of the truths of revelation. The notion of a Supreme Being which he received from Socrates he developed into an almost Christian conception of God and his attributes. In his system the Supreme Deity is not merely the source of the harmony of the universe, but he is also the Father who created out of goodness; and he is in himself so good and perfect that no unrighteousness, no imperfection can be conceived as existing in him. Plato even appears to have had some notion of the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, though of course vague and indistinct. His speculations on the destiny of man and the immortality of the soul are wonderfully luminous. He recognized after a fashion the fallen nature of man and the need of some divine mediation or redemption to raise him up; but in his theory of Fall and Redemption moral and physical defilement and regeneration are strangely and somewhat incongruously blended. Plato’s conception of virtue was exalted and his definition of it singularly Christian. “Virtue,” he said, “is the resemblance to God according to the measure of our ability.” “Be ye imitators of Christ,” “Be ye God-like,” says St. Paul; and to become God-like is to become “holy, just, and wise,” according to Plato.