It is an a.n.a.lysis of a similar kind which we must conduct in reference to sceptical opinions. The influence of the first of the two cla.s.ses of intellectual causes above named,(96) viz. the various forms of knowledge there described, could not exist un.o.bserved, for they are present from time to time as rival doctrines in contest with Christianity; but the kind of influence of which we now treat, which relates to the grounds of belief on which a judgment is consciously or unconsciously formed, is more subtle, and requires a.n.a.lysis for its detection.
We must briefly explain its nature, and ill.u.s.trate its influence on religion.
Metaphysical science is usually divided into two branches; of which one examines the objects known, the other the human mind, that is the organ of knowledge. (7) When Psychology has finished its study of the structure and functions of the mind, it supplies the means for drawing inferences in reply to a question which admits of a twofold aspect, viz. which of the mental faculties,-sense, reason, feeling, furnishes the origin of knowledge; and which is the supreme test of truth? These two questions form the subjective or Psychological branch of Metaphysics. According to the answer thus obtained we deduce a corollary in reference to the objective side. We ask what information is afforded by these mental faculties in respect to the nature or attributes of the objects known,-matter, mind, G.o.d, duty. The answer to this question is the branch commonly called the Ontological. The one inquiry treats of the tests of knowledge, the other of the nature of being. The combination of the two furnishes the answer on its two sides, internally and externally, to the question, What is truth?
The right application of them to the subject of religion would give a philosophy of religion; either objectively by the process of constructing a _theodicee_ or theory to reconcile reason and faith; or subjectively, by separating their provinces by means of such an inquiry into the functions of the religious faculty, and the nature of the truths apprehended by it, as might furnish criteria to determine the amount that is to be appropriated respectively from our own consciousness and from external authority.
The influence of the Ontological branch of the inquiry in producing a struggle with Christianity, has been already included under the difficulties previously named, which are created by the growth of the various sciences.(97) It is the influence of the Psychological branch that we are now ill.u.s.trating, by showing that the various theories in respect of it give their type to various forms of belief and doubt.
The well-known threefold distribution of the faculties that form the ultimate grounds of conviction will suffice for our purpose: viz., sensational consciousness revealing to us the world of matter; intuitive reason that of mind; and feeling that of emotion.(98) These are the forms of consciousness which supply the material from which the reflective powers draw inferences and construct systems.
It is easy to exhibit the mental character which each would have a tendency to generate when applied to a special subject like religion, natural or revealed.
If the eye of sense be the sole guide in looking around on nature, we discover only a universe of brute matter, phenomena linked together in uniform succession of antecedents and consequents. Mind becomes only a higher form of matter. Sin loses its poignancy. Immortality disappears.
G.o.d exists not, except as a personification of the Cosmos. Materialism, atheism, fatalism, are the ultimate results which are proved by logic and history(99) to follow from this extreme view. The idea of spirit cannot be reached by it. For if some other form of experience than the sensitive be regarded as the origin of knowledge; if a n.o.bler view be forced on us by the very inability even to express nature"s phenomena without superadding spiritual qualities; if regularity of succession(100) suggest the idea of order and purpose and mind; if adaptation suggest the idea of morality; if movement suggest the idea of form and will; if will suggest the idea of personality; if the idea of the Cosmos suggest unity, and thus we mount up, step by step, to the conception of a G.o.d, possessing unity, intelligence, will, character, we really transfer into the sphere of nature ideas taken from another region of being, viz., from our consciousness of ourselves, our consciousness of spirit. It is mental a.s.sociation that links these ideas to those of sense, and gives to a sensational philosophy properties not its own. If however sensational experience can by any means arrive at the notion of natural religion; yet it will find a difficulty, created by its belief of the uniformity of nature, in taking the further step of admitting the miraculous interference which gives birth to revealed: and even if this difficulty should be surmounted, the disinclination to the supernatural would nevertheless have a tendency to obliterate mystery by empirical rationalism, and to reduce piety to morality, morality to expedience,(101) the church to a political inst.i.tution, religion to a ritual system, and its evidence to external historic testimony.
The rival system of proof founded in intuitive consciousness is however not free from danger. A difference occurs, according as this endowment is regarded as merely revealing the facts of our own inner experience, or on the other hand as possessing a power to apprehend G.o.d positively, and spirit to spirit.(102) The result of the former belief would be indeed an ethical religion, compared with the political one just described. If it did not rise from the law to the law-giver, it would at least present morality as a law obligatory on man by his mental structure, independently of the consideration of reward and punishment. The ideas of G.o.d, duty, immortality, would be established as a necessity of thought, if not as matters of objective fact. Yet religion would be rather rational than supernatural; obedience to duty instead of communion with Deity; and unless the mind can find ground for a belief in G.o.d and the divine attributes through some other faculty, the idealism must destroy the evidence of revealed religion. Or at least, if the mind admit its truth, it must renounce the right to criticise the material of that which it confesses to be beyond the limits of its own consciousness; and thus, by abdicating its natural powers, blindly submit to external authority, and accept belief as the refuge from its own Pyrrhonism.
If, on the other hand, instead of regarding all attempts to pa.s.s beyond logical forms of thought to be mental impotence, the mind follows its own instincts, and, relying upon the same natural realism which justifies its belief in the immediate character of its sensitive perceptions, ventures to depend with equal firmness on the reality of its intuitional consciousness, religion, natural or revealed, wears another aspect; and both the advantages and the dangers of such a view are widely different.(103) The soul no longer regards the landscape to be a scene painted on the windows of its prison-house, a subjective limit to its perceptions, but not speculatively true; but it wanders forth from its cell unfettered into the universe around. G.o.d is no longer an inference from final causes, nor a principle of thought. He is the living G.o.d, a real personal spirit with whom the soul is permitted to hold direct communion. Providence becomes the act of a personal agent. Religion is the worship in spirit. Sin is seen in its heinousness. Prayer is justified as a reality, as the breathing of the human soul for communion with its infinite Parent (8). And by the light of this intuition, G.o.d, nature, and man, look changed. Nature is no longer a physical engine; man no longer a moral machine. Material nature becomes the regular expression of a personal fixed will; Miracle the direct interposition of a personal free will. Revelation is probable, as the voice of G.o.d"s mercy to the child of His love. Inspiration becomes possible, for the intuitional consciousness seems adapted to be used by divine Providence as its instrument.(104)
But the type of mind created by the use of intuition as a test of truth is rarely alone. It is cognate to, if it is not connected with, that produced by the third of the above-named tests, feeling. The emotions, according to a law of spiritual supply and demand, suggest the reality of the objects toward which they are aspirations. The longing for help, the feeling of dependence, is the justification of prayer; the sense of remorse is the witness to divine judgment; the consciousness of penitence is the ground for hope in G.o.d"s merciful interference; the ineradicable sense of guilt is the eternal witness to the need of atonement; the instinct for immortality is the pledge of a future life.
Yet the use of these tests of intuition and feeling in religion, though possessing these advantages, has dangers. If the feelings, instead of being used to reinforce or check the other faculties, be relied upon as sole arbiters; especially if they be linked with the imagination instead of the intuition; they may conduct to mysticism and superst.i.tion by the very vividness of their perception of the supernatural.(105) Likewise the intuitive faculty, if it be regarded as giving a n.o.ble grasp over the fact of G.o.d as an infinite Spirit, may cause the mind to relax its hold on the idea of the Divine Personality, and fall into Pantheism, and identify G.o.d with the universe, not by degrading spirit to matter, but by elevating matter to spirit.(106) Or, instead of allowing experience and revelation to develop into conceptions of the fundamental truth whose existence it perceives, it may attempt to develop a religion wholly _a priori_,(107) and a.s.sert its right to create as well as to verify. Also, when applying itself to revealed religion, this type of thought necessarily makes its last appeal to inward insight. It cannot, like sensationalism, or subjective idealism, admit its own impotence, and receive on authority a revelation, the contents of which it ventures not to criticise. It must always appropriate that which it is to believe. Accordingly it will have a tendency to render religion subjective in its character, uncertain in its doctrines, individual in its const.i.tution.
These general remarks, every one of which admits of historic exemplification,(108) will suffice to ill.u.s.trate the kind of influence exercised by these respective tests of truth in forming the judgment or moulding the character in relation to the belief or disbelief of natural and revealed religion. These effects are not adduced as the necessary results but as the ordinary tendencies of these respective theories. The mind frequently stops short of the conclusions logically deducible from its own principles. To measure precisely the effect of each view would be impossible. In mental science a.n.a.lysis must be qualitative, not quant.i.tative.
It will hardly be expected that we should arbitrate among these theories, inasmuch as our purpose is not to test the comparative truthfulness of metaphysical opinions, but to refer sceptical opinions in religion to their true scientific and metaphysical parentage. Truth is probably to be found in a selection from all; and historical investigation is the chief means of discovering the mode of conducting the process. It is at least certain, that if history be the form which science necessarily takes in the study of that which is subject to laws of life and organic growth, it must be the preliminary inquiry in any investigation in reference to mental phenomena. The history of philosophy must be the approach to philosophy.(109) The great problem of philosophy is method; and if there be a hope that the true method can ever be found it must be by uniting the historical a.n.a.lysis of the development of the universal mind with the psychological a.n.a.lysis of the individual. The history of thought indicates not only fact but truth; not only shows what has been, but, by exhibiting the proportions which different faculties contribute toward the construction of truth, and indicating tendencies as well as results, prepares materials to be collated with the decision previously made by mental and moral science concerning the question of what ought to be (9).
A definite conviction on this metaphysical inquiry seems perhaps to be involved in the very idea of criticism, and necessary for drawing the moral from the history; yet the independence of our historical inquiry ought to be sacrificed as little as possible to ill.u.s.trate a foregone conclusion. It will be more satisfactory to present the evidence for a verdict without undue advocacy of a side in the metaphysical controversy.(110)
The execution of this design of a.n.a.lysing the intellectual causes of unbelief will necessarily involve to some extent a biographical treatment of the subject, both for theoretical and practical reasons, to discover truth and to derive instruction. This is so evident in the history of action, that there is a danger at the present time lest history should lose the general in the individual, and descend from the rank of science to mere biography.(111) The deeper insight which is gradually obtained into the complexity of nature, together with the fuller conviction of human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and ethical a.n.a.lysis to be subst.i.tuted for historical generalization. The same method however applies to the region of thought as well as will.
Thought, as an intellectual product, can indeed be studied apart from the mind that creates it, and can be treated by history as a material fact subject to the fixed succession of natural laws. But the exclusive use of such a method, at least in any other subject of study than that of the results of physical discovery, must be defective, even independently of the question of the action of free will, unless the thoughts which are the object of study be also connected with the personality of the thinker who produces them. His external biography is generally unimportant, save when the individual character may have impressed itself upon public events; but the internal portraiture, the growth of soul as known by psychological a.n.a.lysis, is the very instrument for understanding the expression of it in life or in literature.(112) It is requisite to know the mental bias of a writer, whether it be practical, imaginative or reflective; to see the _idola specus_ which influenced him, the action of circ.u.mstances upon his character, and the reaction of his character upon circ.u.mstances; before we can gain the clue to the interpretation of his works. But if we wish further to derive moral instruction from him, the biographical mode of study becomes even more necessary. For the notion of freedom as the ground of responsibility is now superadded; and the story of his life is the sole means for such an apprehension of the causes of his heart-struggles as shall enable us to take the gauge of his moral character, and appropriate the lessons derivable from the study of it.
Indeed biographical notices, if they could be extended compatibly with the compa.s.s of the subject, would be the most instructive and vivid mode of presenting alike the facts relating to scepticism and their interpretation. Such memoirs are not wanting, and are among the most touching in literature. The sketch which Strauss has given of his early friend and fellow student Maerklin,(113) gradually surrendering one cherished truth after another, until he doubted all but the law of conscience; then devoting himself in the strength of it with unflinching industry to education; until at last he died in the dark, without belief in G.o.d or hope, cheered only by the consciousness of having tried to find truth and do his duty:-the sad tale, told by two remarkable biographers, of Sterling,(114) doubting, renouncing the ministry, yet thirsting for truth, and at last solacing himself in death by the hopes offered by the Bible, to the eternal truths of which his doubting heart had always clung:-the memoir of the adopted son of our own university, Blanco White,(115) a mind in which faith and doubt were perpetually waging war, till the grave closed over his truth-searching and care-worn spirit:-the confessions of one of our own sons of the successive "phases of faith"(116) through which his soul pa.s.sed from evangelical Christianity to a spiritual Deism, a record of heart-struggles which takes its place among the pathetic works of autobiography, where individuals have unveiled their inner life for the instruction of their fellow-men:-all these are instances where the great moral and spiritual problems that belong to the condition of our race may be seen embodied in the sorrowful experience of individuals. They are instances of rare value for psychological study in reference to the history of doubt; sad beacons of warning and of guidance.
Accordingly, in the history of free thought we must not altogether neglect the spiritual biography of the doubter, though only able to indicate it by a few touches; by an etching, not a photograph.
We have now added to the explanation before given of the province of our inquiry, and of the law of the action of free thought on religion, an account of the moral and intellectual causes which operate in the history of unbelief, and have sufficiently explained the mode in which the subject will be treated.
The use of the inquiry will, it is hoped, be apparent both in its theoretical and practical relations. It is designed to have an intellectual value not only as instruction but as argument. The tendency of it will be in some degree polemical as well as didactic, refuting error by a.n.a.lysing it into its causes, repelling present attacks by studying the history of former ones.
It is one peculiar advantage belonging to the philosophical investigation of the history of thought, that even the odious becomes valuable as an object of study, the pathology of the soul as well as its normal action.
Philosophy takes cognisance of error as well as of truth, inasmuch as it derives materials from both for discovering a theory of the grounds of belief and disbelief. Hence it follows that the study of the natural history of doubt combined with the literary, if it be the means of affording an explanation of a large cla.s.s of facts relating to the religious history of man and the sphere of the remedial operations of Christ"s church, will have a practical value as well as speculative.
Such an inquiry, if it be directed, as in the present lectures, to the a.n.a.lysis of the intellectual rather than the emotional element of unbelief, as being that which has been less generally and less fully explored, will require to be supplemented by a constant reference to the intermixture of the other element, and the consequent necessity of taking account of the latter in estimating the whole phenomenon of doubt. But within its own sphere it will have a practical and polemical value, if the course of the investigation shall show that the various forms of unbelief, when studied from the intellectual side, are corollaries from certain metaphysical or critical systems. The a.n.a.lysis itself will have indirectly the force of an argument. The discovery of the causes of a disease contains the germ of the cure. Error is refuted when it is referred to the causes which produce it.
Nor will the practical value of the inquiry be restricted to its use as a page in the spiritual history of the human mind, but will belong to it also as a chapter in the history of the church. For even if in the study of the contest our attention be almost wholly restricted to the movements of one of the two belligerents, and only occasionally directed to the evidences on which the faith of the church in various crises reposed, and by which it tried to repel the invader, yet the knowledge of the scheme of attack cannot fail to be a valuable accompaniment to the study of the defence.(117)
Thus the natural history of doubt, viewed as a chapter of human history, like the chapter of physiology which studies a disease, will point indirectly to the cure, or at least to the mode of avoiding the causes which induce the disease; while the literary history of it, viewed as a chapter of church history, will contribute the results of experience to train the Christian combatant.
The subject will however not only have an intellectual value in being at once didactic and polemical, offering an explanation of the causes of unbelief and furnishing hints for their removal; but it cannot fail also to possess a moral value in reference to the conscience and heart of the disputant, in teaching the lesson of mercy towards the unbeliever, and deep pity for the heart wounded with doubts. An intelligent acquaintance with the many phases of history operates like foreign travel in widening the sympathies; and increase of knowledge creates the moderation which gains the victory through attracting an enemy instead of repelling him.
Bigotry is founded on ignorance and fear. True learning is temperate, because discriminating; forbearing, because courageous. If we place ourselves in the position of an opponent, and try candidly to understand the process by which he was led to form his opinions, indignation will subside into pity, and enmity into grief: the hatred will be reserved for the sin, not for the sinner; and the servant of Jesus Christ will thus catch in some humble measure the forbearing love which his divine Master showed to the first doubting disciple.(118) As the sight of suffering in an enemy changes the feeling of anger into pity, so the study of a series of spiritual struggles makes us see in an opponent, not an enemy to be crushed, but a brother to be won. The utility of a historic treatment of doubt is suggested by moral as well as intellectual grounds.
I hope therefore that if I follow the example of some of my predecessors,(119) in giving a course of lectures historical rather than polemical, evincing the critic rather than the advocate, seeking for truth rather than victory, a.n.a.lysing processes of evidence rather than refuting results, my humble contribution toward the knowledge of the argument of the Christian evidences will be considered to come fairly within the design intended by the founder of the lecture.
It may well be believed that in the execution of so large a scheme I have felt almost overwhelmed under a painful sense of its difficulty. If even I may venture to hope that a conscientious study in most cases of the original sources of information may save me from literary mistakes, yet there is a danger lest the size of the subject should preclude the possibility of constant clearness; or lest the very a.n.a.lysis of the errors of the systems named, may produce a painful, if not an injurious, impression. In an age too of controversy, those who speak on difficult questions incur a new danger, of being misunderstood from the sensitiveness with which earnest men not unreasonably watch them. The att.i.tude of suspicion may cause impartiality to be regarded as indifference to truth, fairness as sympathy with error. I am not ashamed therefore to confess, that under the oppressive sense of these various feelings I have been wont to go for help to the only source where the burdened heart can find consolation; and have sought, in the communion with the Father of spirits which prayer opens to the humblest, a temper of candour, of reverence, and of the love of truth. In this spirit I have made my studies; and what I have thus learned I shall teach.
LECTURE II. THE LITERARY OPPOSITION OF HEATHENS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY IN THE EARLY AGES.
1 COR. i. 22-24.
_The Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified; unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, Christ the wisdom of G.o.d._
It has been already stated(120), that in the first great struggle of the human mind against the Christian religion the action of reason in criticising its claims a.s.sumed two forms, Gnosticism or rationalism within the church, and unbelief without.
The origin and history of the former of these two lines of thought were once discussed in an elaborate course of Bampton Lectures;(121) and though subsequent investigation has added new sources of information,(122) and it would be consonant to our general object to trace briefly the speculations of the various schools of Gnostics,-Greek, Oriental, or Egyptian,-the want of s.p.a.ce necessitates the omission of these topics. In the present lecture we shall accordingly restrict ourselves to the history of the other line of thought, and trace the grounds alleged by the intelligent heathens who examined Christianity, for declining to admit its claims, from the time of its rise to the final downfall of heathenism.
The truest modern resemblance to this struggle is obviously to be found in the disbelief shown by educated heathens in pagan countries to whom Christianity is proclaimed in the present day. It was not until the establishment of Christianity as the state religion by Constantine had given it political and moral victory, that it was possible for unbelief to a.s.sume its modern aspect, of being the attempt of reason to break away from a creed which is an acknowledged part of the national life. The first opponents accordingly whose views we shall study, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, are heathen unbelievers. Julian is the earliest that we encounter who rejected Christianity after having been educated in it.
The resemblance however to this struggle is not wholly restricted to heathen lands. There have been moments in the history of nations, or of individuals, when a Christian standard of feeling or of thought has been so far obliterated that a state of public disbelief and philosophical attack similar to the ancient heathen has reappeared, and the tone of the early unbelievers, and sometimes even their specific doubts, have been either borrowed or reproduced.(123)
In this portion of the history we encounter a difficulty peculiar to it, in being compelled to form an estimate of the opinions described, from indirect information. The treatises of the more noted writers that opposed Christianity have perished; some through natural causes, but those of Porphyry and Julian through the special order of a Christian emperor, Theodosius II., in A.D. 435.
In the absence accordingly of the original writings, we must discover the grounds for the rejection of Christianity by the aid of the particular treatises of evidence written by Christian fathers expressly in refutation of them, which occasionally contain quotations of the lost works; and also by means of the general apologies written on behalf of the Christian religion, together with slight notices of it occurring in heathen literature. The latter will inform us concerning the miscellaneous objections current, the former concerning the definite arguments of the writers who expressly gave reasons for disbelieving Christianity.(124)
We possess a large treatise of Origen against Celsus; pa.s.sages, directed against Porphyry, of Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustin; a tract of Eusebius against Hierocles; and a work of Cyril of Alexandria against Julian. Yet it is never perfectly satisfactory to be obliged to read an opinion through the statement of an opponent of it. The history of philosophical controversy shows that intellectual causes, such as the natural tendency to answer an argument on principles that its author would not concede, to reply to conclusions instead of premises, or to impute the corollaries which are supposed to be deducible from an opinion, may lead to unintentional misrepresentation of a doctrine refuted, even where no moral causes such as bias or sarcasm contribute to the result. Aristotle"s well-known criticism of Plato"s theory of archetypes is a pertinent ill.u.s.tration.(125)
The slight difficulty thus encountered, in extracting the real opinions of the early unbelievers out of the replies of their Christian opponents, may for the most part be avoided by first realising the state of belief which existed in reference to the heathen religion, which for our present purpose may be treated as h.o.m.ogeneous throughout the whole Roman world. We shall thus be enabled as it were to foresee the line of opinion which would be likely to be adopted in reference to a new religion coming with the claims and character of Christianity. This prefatory inquiry will also coincide with our general purpose of a.n.a.lysing the influence of intellectual causes in the production of unbelief.
Four separate tendencies may be distinguished among heathens in the early centuries in reference to religion:(126) viz. the tendency, (1) to absolute unbelief, (2) to a bigoted attachment to a national creed, (3) to a philosophical, and (4) a mystical theory of religion.
The tendency to total disbelief of the supernatural prevailed in the Epicurean school. A type of the more earnest spirits of this cla.s.s is seen at a period a little earlier than the Christian era in Lucretius, living mournfully in the moral desert which his doubts had scorched into barrenness.(127) The world is to him a scene unguided by a Providence: death is uncheered by the hope of a future life. An example of the flippant sceptic is found in Lucian in the second century, A.D. The great knowledge of life which travel had afforded him created a universal ridicule for religion; but his unbelief evinced no seriousness, no sadness. His humour itself is a type of the man. Lacking the bitter earnestness which gave sting to the wit of Aristophanes, and the courteous playfulness exhibited in the many-sided genius of Plato, he was a caricaturist rather than a painter: his dialogues are farces of life rather than satires. It has been well remarked, that human society has no worse foe than a universal scoffer. Lacking aspirations sufficiently lofty to appreciate religion, and wisdom to understand the great crises that give birth to it, such a man destroys not superst.i.tion only but the very faculty of belief.(128) It is easy to perceive that to such minds Christianity would be a mark for the same jests as other creeds.
A second tendency, most widely opposed in appearance to the sceptical, but which was too often its natural product, showed itself in a bigoted attachment to the national religion.(129) Among the ma.s.ses such faith was real though unintelligent, but in educated men it had become artificial.
When an ethnic religion is young, faith is fresh and gives inspiration to its art and its poetry. In a more critical age, the historic spirit rationalizes the legends, while the philosophic allegorizes the myths; and thoughtful men attempt to rise to a spiritual worship of which rites are symbols.(130) But in the decay of a religion, the supernatural loses its hold of the cla.s.s of educated minds, and is regarded as imposture, and the support which they lend to worship is political. They fall back on tradition to escape their doubts, or they think it politically expedient to enforce on the ma.s.ses a creed which they contemn in heart. Such a ground of attachment to paganism is described in the dialogue of the Christian apologist, Minucius Felix.(131) It would not only coincide with the first-named tendency in denying the importance of Christianity, but would join in active opposition. In truth, it marks the commencement of the strong reaction which took place in favour of heathenism at the close of the second century,-twofold in its nature; a popular reaction of prejudice or of mysticism on the part of the lower cla.s.ses, and a political or philosophical one of the educated.(132) Both were in a great degree produced by Eastern influences. The subst.i.tution which was gradually taking place of naturalism for humanism, the adoration of cosmical and mystical powers instead of the human attributes of the deities of the older creed, was the means of re-awakening popular superst.i.tion, while at the same time the Alexandrian speculations of Neo-Platonism gave a religious aspect to philosophy.
Accordingly the third, or philosophical tendency in reference to religion, distinct from the two already named, of positive unbelief in the supernatural on the one hand, and devotion sincere or artificial to heathen worship on the other, comprises, in addition to the older schools of Stoics and Platonists, the new eclectic school just spoken of. The three schools agreed in extracting a philosophy out of the popular religion, by searching for historic or moral truth veiled in its symbols.
The Stoic, as being the least speculative, employed itself less with religion than the others. Its doctrine, ethical rather than metaphysical, concerned with the will rather than the intellect, juridical and formal rather than speculative, seemed especially to give expression to the Roman character, as the Platonic to the Greek, or as the eclectic to the hybrid, half Oriental half European, which marked Alexandria. In the writings of M. Aurelius, one of the emperors most noted for the persecution of the church, it manifests itself rather as a rule of life than a subject for belief, as morality rather than religion.(133) The Stoic opposition to Christianity was the contempt of the Gaul or Roman for what was foreign, or of ethical philosophy for religion.
The Platonic doctrine, so far as it is represented in an impure form in the early centuries, sought, as of old, to explore the connexion between the visible and invisible worlds, and to rise above the phenomenon into the spiritual. Hence in its view of heathen religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impa.s.sable chasm G.o.d from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien both to dualism and pantheism.
The line is not very marked which separates this philosophy from the professed revival of Plato"s teaching, which received the name of Neo-Platonism, which was the philosophy with which Christianity came most frequently into conflict or contact during the third and two following centuries (10). Fastening on the more mystical parts of Plato, to the neglect of the more practical, it probably borrowed something also from Eastern mysticism. The object of the school was to find an explanation of the problem of existence, by tracing the evolution of the absolute cause in the universe through a trinal manifestation, as being, thought, and action. The agency by which the human mind apprehended this process lay in the attainment of a kind of insight wherein the organ of knowledge is one with the object known, a state of mind and feeling whereby the mind gazes on a sphere of being which is closed to the ordinary faculties.
Sch.e.l.ling"s theory of "intellectual intuition" is the modern parallel to this Neo-Platonic State of ??stas?? or ?????s?as??. This philosophy, though frequently described in modern times as bearing a resemblance to Christianity in method, as being the knowledge of the one absolute Being by means of faith, is really most widely opposed in its interior spirit.