as if gold were animated, and, in consequence of being incrusted with earth, not perceiving itself to be gold, should be ignorant of itself; but afterward, shaking off the earth which adheres to it, should be filled with admiration in beholding itself pure and alone." This is necessarily a slow process. The soul is like "children who, immediately torn from their parents, and for a long time nurtured at a great distance from them, become ignorant both of themselves and their parents;" 2 and so it does not respond at once. It is not fitted for the sudden burst of light which marks the final vision, and so it must be prepared by degrees, through the contemplation of beautiful objects, beautiful sentiments, beautiful actions, beautiful souls. "All that tends to purify and elevate the mind will assist in this attainment, and there are three different roads by which the end may be reached. The love of beauty which exalts the poet, that devotion to the one and that ascent of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher, and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity toward perfection - these are the great highways conducting to that height above the actual and the particular, where we stand in the immediate presence of the infinite, who shines out as from the deeps of the soul." 8 But in all this the soul must be on its guard continually not to remain entangled in mere particulars. This constitutes the imperfection of the life of moral conduct as an ultimate end. In a good deed there is implicit a certain universal value; but it is only ascetic contemplation which is able to free this ideal fact from the unessentials in which it is immersed. As Ulysses from the magician Circe, we must flee to our native land, and abandon wholly this dangerous realm. The love of God means the giving up of all earthly loves. And when one has seen God face to face, he cares for no minor beauties. one who, entering 1 Plotinus, IV, 7, 10. As 2 V, I, I. into the interior of the adytum, leaves behind all the statues in the temple, or as those who enter the sanctuaries purify themselves, laying aside their garments, and enter naked, so should the soul approach its goal. "This, therefore, is the life of the Gods, and of divine and happy men—a liberation from all terrene affairs, a life unaccompanied with human pleasures, a flight of the alone to the alone."1 An immortality in the ordinary sense is only a denial of true life; "a resurrection with body is a transmigration from sleep to sleep, like a man passing in the dark from bed to bed." 2 The true goal is only reached when the soul loses all thought, desire, and activity, all individual life, in an ecstasy of immediate union with God. "This is the true end of the soul, to come into contact with his light, and to behold him through it, not by the light of another thing, but to perceive that very thing itself through which it sees."3 In this darkness which transcends all gnostic illumination,' it does not see another, but becomes one with God, absorbed, conjoining centre with centre. 4. Later Neo-Platonism. — The spiritualization of the world in which Neo-Platonism results, and the absence of any adequate feeling for natural law, opened the way for an appeal to non-physical agencies in the explanation of events, which might easily become fantastic; and among the successors of Plotinus this is what took place. The world becomes a great hierarchy of souls - Gods, demons, men, - and the mystical affinities and relationships between souls, which find expression in divination, astrology, and magical rites, tend to take the place of sober investigation. Jamblicus, the founder of Syrian Neo-Platonism, has a special connection with this tendency. Historically, this last outcome of Greek thought gets an importance through making itself the champion of Paganism, in the now losing struggle which this was carrying on with Christianity. The struggle was wholly unsuc 2 III, 6, 6. 8 V, 3, 17. 1 Plotinus, VI, 9, 11. cessful. The future belonged to Christianity; philosophy could hope to survive, not by antagonizing it, and joining forces with its rival, but by accepting the new and vigorous contribution which it was making to the life of the world, and moulding this into its own forms. For a moment Paganism seemed to have a chance of success, when the Emperor Julian, called by Christians the Apostate a man trained in the school of the Neo-Platonists attempted to reverse the verdict of history. But a halfsentimental regret for the beauty of the pagan past was no match for the living forces of the present; and at the death of Julian his plans came to nothing. The last refuge of Neo-Platonism was the Academy at Athens, in connection with which the name of Proclus is the most important. But in 529 A.D. the Academy was closed by order of the Emperor Justinian, the teaching of heathen philosophy was forbidden, and the philosophers driven into exile. LITERATURE Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics. § 20. Christianity. The Church Fathers. Augustine I. The new power which thus seemed to have supplanted the old was, in its inception, not a philosophy, but a life. Questions of theory occupied the early disciples but little; belief in God, and the influence of the dominant personality of Christ in renewing the life of the soul and shaping it into His own likeness, were the central features of the new religion. The evidences of acceptance with God were the fruits of love, peace, righteousness, not a belief in any set of doctrines. Originally, then, Christianity had no conscious dependence on philosophical thought. And among many of the early fathers, as, for example, Tertullian, there was a disposition to be openly hostile to the encroachments of philosophy, or reason, as opposed to the purity and simplicity of faith in the gospel. Nevertheless, if Christianity was to continue to expand, its coming under the influence of Greek forms of thought was a foregone conclusion. As converts began to come in from the Gentile world, they would bring with them inevitably their former modes of thinking. Some of them, like Justin Martyr, had been philosophers before they became Christians. They had sought for truth as Stoics, and Peripatetics, and Pythagoreans; and now that they had found the goal of their seeking in the religion of Christ, they could not but look at this in terms of the problems they had previously been trying to solve, and regard it as the true philosophy, as well as the true life. The necessity for justifying themselves to the heathen world would lead in the same direction. Of course there was danger in this. In many cases the theoretical interest began to overshadow the practical, even sometimes to displace it. By a very considerable body of Christians, the essential thing came to be looked upon, not as a Christ-like character, but as a superior and esoteric knowledge (gnosis), which was really only a philosophy, constructed, though more fantastically, along the lines of Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism. The Christian tinge was sometimes merely nominal. This attempt by Gnosticism to capture the new religion in the interests of Græco-Oriental philosophy, constituted one of the earliest and gravest dangers to the Church, which was only averted after many years of stubborn controversy. But although the Gnostics were defeated, they left their mark upon their antagonists. The Church never went back to the primitive form of undogmatic Christianity which had represented its early type; orthodoxy became identified with a middle course between the two extremes. It rejected such doctrines as were inconsistent with the genius of Christianity; but it began, nevertheless, to lay greater stress upon doctrinal agreement and theoretical formulation. For this work it had of necessity to make use of the intellectual tools which Greek philosophy had forged. There was a more conscious use of these in some cases than in others. In Alexandria, especially, where philosophical traditions were strong, there arose a school of philosophical theologians, of which Origen (185-254) is the most important representative. These attempted with clear insight, and very considerable ability, to Platonize theology. And even when theology supposed it was dispensing with the help of philosophy, it was still dependent upon it at every step. From one point of view this involved a loss to Christianity. The substitution of dogma for the free spirit of devotion, which finds the end of the religious life in a personal love and service, went along necessarily with a certain lowering of the standard, and misplacement of emphasis. But still the change could hardly have been avoided, if Christianity was to do the work it actually succeeded in doing. As time went on, the whole character of the Church altered. It became, of course, larger and more unwieldy. Instead of the little groups of earnest disciples, fully permeated by the spirit of the Gospel, there began to flock to it, attracted by its growing success, a multitude of men who were only superficially affected by their new professions. Later on, when the Empire fell, it was the Church which more and more was compelled to assume many of the civil functions of society, if anarchy was to be averted. Under these conditions, nothing but a strong ecclesiastical organization, and a definitely formulated creed, could have held the Church together as a single catholic body; and without such a unity its work could not have been done. The Church creed preserved Christianity on a distinctly lower level than was represented in primitive Apostolic times, but |