Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM 239The third takes in his life as a public teacher. Comingback as accredited by the Indian sages, yet as an equal,not as an inferior, he meets with universal acceptancethroughout ^J the whole realm which is the dominion ofthe Greek mind. He teaches and instructs all ordersrom city to city, enlightens priests as to their duties,encourages and revives worship according to the severalrites of the various divinities, admonishes emperors, andfinds by personal converse with the sages of Egypt-therival of Hellas-that its wisdom is inferior to his own.In the fourth period we pass to his suffering life, inwhich in the fulness of years he goes of his own accordin defiance of warnings to Borne in order to encounterthe tyranny of Domitian. Philosophers cower beforethe emperor, and, it may be added, Christians are putto death by him, the result being that Apollonius istreated by him with contumely, but escapes by miraclein the open court, and laughs his power to scorn. Thefifth period carries us to the triumphant life of the sage,following upon this sort of resurrection. Greece in thevery central point of its varied life, Olympia, is stirredat his presence, hangs upon his lips, follows his footstepswith a crowd of disciples, the flower of the land,who are called after his name Apollonians, while in allthis he is only reproducing the wisdom of Pythagoras,as he shows by emerging from the oracle of Trophoniuswith a book containing the precepts of the Samian sage.Thus in all his life he is but inheriting the heirloomof the Greek mind, is but the manifestation of theGreek spirit, what any one may be who knows " bothwhat he is and what he has been," that is, is consciousof the imperishable soul which has lived before andwill live after him through a series of transmigrations.Thus Apollonius, fairer in age than in youth, unim-