te of noble and
elevating truths, are merely flashes of that primeval light, in the full
flood of which, man, in his more perfect antediluvian state, delighted to
dwell; and it is remarkable in the case of Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Thales,
and so many other of the Greek philosophers, that the further we trace
them back, we come nearer to the divine truth, which, in the systems of
Epicurus, Aristippus, Zeno, or the shallow or cold philosophers of later
origin, altogether disappears. Pythagoras and Plato were indeed divinely
gifted with a scientific presentiment of the great truths of Christianity
soon to be revealed, or say rather restored to the world; while Aristotle,
on the other hand, is to be regarded as the father of those unhappy
academical schismatics from the Great Church of living humanity, who
allowed the ministrant faculty of reason to assume an unlawful supremacy
over the higher powers of intellect, and gave birth to that voracious
despotism of barren dialectics, in the middle ages commonly called the
scholastic philosophy. The Greek philosophy, however, even its noblest
Avatar, Plato, much less in the case of a Zeno or an Aristotle, was never
able to achieve that which must be the practically proposed end of all
higher philosophy that is in earnest; viz. the coming out of the narrow
sphere of the school and the palaestra, uniting itself with actual life,
and embodying itself completely in the shape of that which we call a
CHURCH. This Platonism could not do. Christianity did it. Revelation did
it. God Incarnate did it. Now once again came humanity forth, fresh from
the bosom of the divine creativeness, conquering and to conquer. There was
no Aristotle and Plato--no Abelard and Bernard here--reason carping at
imagination, and imagination despising reason. But once, if but once in
four thousand years, man appeared in all the might of his living
completeness. Love walked hand in hand with knowledge, and both were
identified in life. The spirit of divine peace brooded in the inner
sanctuary of the heart, while the outer man was mailed for the sternest
warfare. Such was pure Christianity, so long as it lasted--for the
celestial plant was condemned to grow in a terrestrial atmosphere; and
there, alas! it could only grow with a stunted likeness of itself. It
was more than stunted also--it was tainted; for are not all things tainted
here? Do we not live in a tainted atmosphere? do we not live in a time out
of joint? Do