must go on justifying,
reconciling, confuting, those views and apprehensions by the
demonstration of facts_" [72]

[Footnote 72: Maurice, _Philos. of the First Six Centuries_, p. 37. We
venture specially to recommend this weighty and beautiful passage to the
reader's serious attention.]

But perhaps some reader will say, What advantage, then, can we gain by
studying in Pagan writers truths which are expressed more nobly, more
clearly, and infinitely more effectually in our own sacred books? Before
answering the question, let me mention the traditional anecdote[73] of
the Caliph Omar. When he conquered Alexandria, he was shown its
magnificent library, in which were collected untold treasures of
literature, gathered together by the zeal, the labour, and the
liberality of a dynasty of kings. "What is the good of all those books?"
he said. "They are either in accordance with the Koran, or contrary to
it. If the former they are superfluous; if the latter they are
pernicious. In either case let them be burnt." Burnt they were, as
legend tells; but all the world has condemned the Caliph's reasoning as
a piece of stupid Philistinism and barbarous bigotry. Perhaps the
question as to the _use_ of reading Pagan ethics is equally
unphilosophical; at any rate, we can spare but very few words to its
consideration. The answer obviously is, that God has spoken to men,
[Greek: polymeros kai polytropos], "at sundry times and in divers
manners," [74] with a richly variegated wisdom.[75] Sometimes He has
taught truth by the voice of Hebrew prophets, sometimes by the voice of
Pagan philosophers. And _all_ His voices demand our listening ear. If it
was given to the Jew to speak with diviner insight and intenser power,
it is given to the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and lofty
utterance, and we may learn truth from men of alien lips and another
tongue. They, too, had the dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the
harp, the "daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the graven
gems. And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness;
with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated
manhood; with a new power of conviction from their originality of form,
which, because it is less familiar to us, is well calculated to arrest
our attention after it has been paralysed by familiar repetitions. We
cannot afford to lose these heathen testimonies to Christian truth; or
to hush the glorious utteranc