Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM135chooses out its instruments before every good deed,nay, before birth itself. So perseverance in good-willcan only be attained by one who is under the divineprotection. From this point of view the task of mannaturally would be not merely to exhibit humanreason in life and action, but the most necessarything for him is to put himself in relation to God,and take the motives of his conduct from this relation.True morality is imitation of God. Whoever followsonly his own conviction of good and duty, howeverright and pure this conviction may be, does not yetpossess right virtue, which belongs to him who deverything only out of regard to God. If then Phagrees with the Greek philosophers in founding virupon wisdom or knowledge, still this wisdom isanother kind from theirs. True science has in hismeaning one only object, the Godhead. The unfailingground of wisdom, nay, true wisdom itself, is only faith.Thus the negative description of virtue, according towhich it would consist in deliverance from sensuality,receives its positive completion. It lies however notin human nature and action as such, but only in theirrelation to the Godhead.Knowledge itself has only value so far as it bearson the moral and religious state of man. Not onlythe encyclical sciences, mathematics, grammar, andthe rest, but many philosophical inquiries have onlya subordinate importance for Philo. They are onlya preparation for wisdom, not wisdom itself : onlymilk-food for children, Chaldean arts, attendantsupon true science. Perfect virtue is Sara, encyclicalknowledge Hagar. If a man must first be versed inthis, and if even the friend of wisdom must embraceHagar before he can have children by Sara, and asST.