f these sublime objects to the
worship of the Creator. Greek philosophy in particular was the
preparation of the Greeks for Christ. It was the schoolmaster or
paedagogue to lead them to Christ. Plato was Moses atticizing. Clement
varies in his statement how Plato got his wisdom or his fragments of the
Reason. Sometimes he thinks that they came direct from God, like all
good things, but he is also fond of maintaining that many of Plato's
best thoughts were borrowed from the Hebrew prophets; and he makes the
same statement in regard to the wisdom of the other philosophers. But
however this may be, Christ was the end to which all that was true in
philosophies pointed. Christ himself was the Logos, the Reason. God the
Father was ineffable. The Son alone can manifest Him fully. He is the
Reason that pervades the universe, that brings out all goodness, that
guides all good men. It was through possessing somewhat of this Reason
that the philosophers attained to any truth and goodness; but in
Christians he dwells more fully and guides them through all the
perplexities of life. Photius, probably on a careless reading of
Clement, argued that he could not have believed in a real incarnation.
But the words of Clement are quite precise and their meaning
indisputable. The real difficulty attaches not to the Second Person, but
to the First. The Father in Clement's mind becomes the Absolute of the
philosophers, that is to say, not the Father at all, but the Monad, a
mere point devoid of all attributes. He believed in a personal Son of
God who was the Reason and Wisdom of God; and he believed that this Son
of God really became incarnate though he speaks of him almost invariably
as the Word, and attaches little value to his human nature. The object
of his incarnation and death was to free man from his sins, to lead him
into the path of wisdom, and thus in the end elevate him to the position
of a god. But man's salvation was to be gradual. It began with faith,
passed from that to love, and ended in full and complete knowledge.
There could be no faith without knowledge. But the knowledge is
imperfect, and the Christian was to do many things in simple obedience
without knowing the reason. But he has to move upwards continually until
he at length does nothing that is evil, and he knows fully the reason
and object of what he does. He thus becomes the true Gnostic, but he can
become the true Gnostic only by contemplation and by the practice of