Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

256 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMis dissolved in corruption, like a mettlesome courserfreed from all restraint, it mingles with thin air,casting off at length its long-endured and hatefulservitude." l The individual man then ceases to be :why should the body, which drops away and is neverto be glorified, suffer crucifixion ? Unless man needsredemption, there is no reason for the cross. Unlessbody and soul live together for ever, there is no rewardfor it. Philostratus neither accepted the reason noraspired after the reward.The sum then of the contrast we have been notingis this. Apollonius is the man-god, by virtue of thespark of divine intelligence, of which his soul is enkindled,and his ideal task is to restore the order ofthe universe first in the individual man and then inthe commonwealth. In doing this the appearance ofsuffering and shame may rest upon him, but not itsreality, and the soul which seems in its divine actionlike a god upon earth reaches its full power whendelivered from the trammels of the body. If themanifold resemblances before noted assure us thatApollonius was intended to be a heathen Christ, thecontrast here shown goes to the very bottom of thefundamental antagonism between philosophic heathenismin what we may certainly call its highest form,and the Christian faith.We now come to the question, what was the attitudeof Philostratus in this work towards the Christianreligion ? We have found him completely ignoring it,yet delineating a character which had no original inheathen history. The Pythagoras referred to is sodressed up in the school to which Philostratus belongedas to be a mere fiction. Yet it is a tacit imitation1 Book viii. 31.