Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GOSPEL OF PHILOSOPHIC HEATHENISM2533. The biographer plainly conceives that he isexalting his hero to the utmost when he makes himteach philosophy at Rome in spite of Nero's tyranny,to which, however, he gives way by retiring uponthe definitive banishment of philosophers: and thathe does this still more when he makes Apollonius goto Rome to meet the accusations brought against himbefore Domitian, and take this occasion to rebuke hisdespotism. In fact, in the Pythagorean philosophythe tyranny of despotism would be that malady in thecommonwealth corresponding to the malady in theindividual whereby the unseemly passions of the bodyinvade and subject the soul, both again being imagesof that chaos in the universe which existed in shapelessconflict before the divine reason reduced it toorder. The function of wisdom, which is the soulacting by the energy of its divine nature, is to restoreharmony in the inner world of man and the outerworld of human society. But Philostratus is far fromgoing any deeper than this into the malady of humannature. Nay, he expressly declares that God Himself,the Constructor of the universe, cannot wash the soulfrom the guilt of blood once shed.4. We see, then, that Philostratus had caught andimitated that portion of our Lord's character whichconsisted in His being a public teacher, going aboutdoing good: but he had not the least entered intoHis character as a Redeemer from sin, and a Victim.And the next contrast we shall note very curiouslyillustrates this defect in the heathen apprehension.Thus he gives his hero a miraculous * birth and a mira-culous departure from the earth, and it is difficult toread them without at once thinking of our Lord'sNativity and Ascension. They are plainly heathen